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 Aldarionn wrote:

 purplefood wrote:
My gun accuses me of not seeing my parents as often as i should...
Now i have a feeling Zero (Or Eduardo as i have renamed him) is the kind of guy whose parents are dead either because of revenge from some people he shooted up or because they are a liability...

I like to think that Zero is the embodiment of violence itself, and thus has no parents. He was simply spawned into being because Pandora is such a hellhole, like a murder elemental.

Zer0--A Murdental!

So I'm toying with a few skill builds for Gaige once I hit 50. Here are the ones I like best so far:

Best Friends Forever + Ordered Chaos
This spec combines a strong Deathtrap with the key abilities from Anarchy. I think this is probably the most powerful build of the bunch considering it drastically improves gun damage, has multiple ways to regenerate health and shields, and has the option of using Discord to regenerate health and improve rate of fire. This spec would most likely use a low stack of anarchy and constant Discord and only build a high stack of Anarchy if insane burst damage was necessary.

Little Big Trouble + Best Friends Forever
This build is designed to maximize Deathtraps DPS at the expense of his personal survivability. It lacks the cooldown reduction and the shield of the previous build but otherwise is a monster, causing hilarious amounts of elemental damage. I have not been playing down the LBT tree at all though, so much of the talent selection is based on theory. If anyone has some experience with this tree and can give insight I'd appreciate it.

Tri-Spec
A fun build more than an effective one. It's designed to give Deathtrap a large number of abilities while picking up the key abilities in the Ordered Chaos tree. Much like the first build, the idea is to balance Anarchy stacks with Discord, but rather than focusing on one of the other two trees, it splits the points to pick up a number of useful abilities for Deathtrap like Upshot Robot, The Stare and One Two Boom. Close Enough, Fancy Mathmatics and Buck Up are taken to help offset the accuracy problems within Ordered Chaos, and to give Gaige a few defensive abilities. The lack of The Better Half does hurt slightly since Anarchy won't be stacking quite as fast, but I feel that Fancy Mathematics is a more important skill for a build that lacks tanking elements.

Thoughts?

Advice time!

Okay, so I'm playing Axton. Just finished the first playthrough at 35 with a Guerilla build with a sprinkling of Gunpowder. I'm thinking of switching specs because I was getting REALLY frustrated last night (granted it was a bad day out of game, but whatever)...

It seems like I would pop my head out of anywhere and just get shot down to FFYL in one to two shots (approach with Brick and Mord to Warrior). I was burning through money like crazy. Do I just suck at this game or am I doing something wrong?

My shield was an amplify with lower (~3k) rating and I swapped out to a turtle with higher (~4800) rating because of survivability. I've been sniping with the Hyperion gun and then moving forward to deal with stragglers and heavily depending on my turret.

Right now, I'm probably going to try a couple other builds and play another class to see if I have this much trouble with them.

 pretre wrote:
Advice time!

Okay, so I'm playing Axton. Just finished the first playthrough at 35 with a Guerilla build with a sprinkling of Gunpowder. I'm thinking of switching specs because I was getting REALLY frustrated last night (granted it was a bad day out of game, but whatever)...

It seems like I would pop my head out of anywhere and just get shot down to FFYL in one to two shots (approach with Brick and Mord to Warrior). I was burning through money like crazy. Do I just suck at this game or am I doing something wrong?

My shield was an amplify with lower (~3k) rating and I swapped out to a turtle with higher (~4800) rating because of survivability. I've been sniping with the Hyperion gun and then moving forward to deal with stragglers and heavily depending on my turret.

Right now, I'm probably going to try a couple other builds and play another class to see if I have this much trouble with them.

No, that's a particularly difficult area. I got knocked down a few times myself, and the only reason I didn't have more trouble was because I have an absolutely absurd weapon, and I'm playing Gaige so I had a tank. That said, Axton should have less trouble than any of the others since the turret can do some pretty serious damage.

Could you outline your spec?

At level 31 you should be able to get this spec which should greatly improve your ability to deal damage and stay alive. You should be constantly regenerating health while damaging enemies and you will have two guns on your rocket firing turret. You should go for a shield that has a high capacity but a long recharge delay, but does NOT reduce health (Avoid turtle shields). A raid shield is perfect for this build. The idea is that while your shield is depleted you should be dealing bonus damage and it should be easier to get second winds, and if your shield is up you should be fine because you aren't taking fire.

If you are still having issues, start taking points in the survivability tree to increase your shields and regenerate health while they are full. At tier 2 you will have increased gun damage and movement speed in FFYL which should make it very easy to get second winds. Shoot for this build at level 50. In addition to all of the stuff that first build gives you, it will let you place your turret on walls and ceilings, project a damage reduction barrier, and give you shield regen when you kill an enemy. It should be one of the most survivable builds in the game.

Edit - Seems my share links are not working properly. I'm not sure why, because they were working fine before. In case they remain broken....

Level 31 spec
Guerrilla
--Sentry (5/5)
--Laser Sight (5/5)
--Willing (5/5)
--Scorched Earth (1/1)
--Able (4/5)
--Crisis Management (5/5)
--Double Up (1/1)

Level 50 spec
Guerrilla
--Sentry (5/5)
--Laser Sight (5/5)
--Willing (5/5)
--Scorched Earth (1/1)
--Able (5/5)
--Crisis Management (5/5)
--Double Up (1/1)
Survival
--Preparation (5/5)
--Last Ditch Effort (5/5)
--Phalanx Shield (1/1)
--Quick Charge (4/5)
--Mag Lock (1/1)
--Resourceful (2/5)

Hope that helps!

My work comp hates the talent calc. From memory, I have:
5 Sentry
1 Ready
5 Laser Sight
3 or 4 Willing
4 or 5 Able
1 Scorched Earth
5 Onslaught (with +3 Relic)
1 Double Up

3 or 4 Impact (with +2 Relic)
1 Expertise

I'm pretty much always regenning health and my shields come back quick, but some stuff just one to two shots me. If that's just the areas, I'll power through them. The other thing I need to go back and do is the last phase of the Hyperion arena which lost me a ton of money from deaths.

Your spec is reasonable and I don't see why you should be having that much trouble. There are a few things to watch out for though, in particular the Constructor that spawns on the roof near the end, the Badass constructor at the very end, and the ION Loaders that project shields. You need to damage the shield with a shock weapon to drop it in order to be able to hurt the guys inside of it. The same goes for the turrets that are shielded. Non-elemental weapons will bounce right off and the bullets will ricochet into you, so you need to take down the shield with shock, then kill the turret.

On a side note, since you didn't take Crisis Management it might be a better idea to drop the point from Ready into Willing to bring your shield back faster.

The reason I suggest going Survival as your second tree is because it gives you a kill skill that regenerates your shield when you kill an enemy. Because of the way those skills work, anything that starts your shield regenerating overrides the recharge delay of your shield so it will continue to regenerate up to full strength once the regen starts. It can DRAMATICALLY improve survivability, and you can reasonably take a shield with a 5 second recharge delay if it has decent regeneration rate and capacity. Most other classes have one of those skills in their "best" tree but Axton does not. He regenerates health when damaging enemies instead of shields, and that makes him a little less survivable unless you dip into the Survival tree.

One final piece of advice. If you do not have them already, look for Slag Singularity grenades. They are amazingly useful, since they pull nearby enemies towards them before exploding and slagging them. It's a great way to bunch up enemies for your turret to mow down, and slag them at the same time.

My Axton is 48 and I went heavy on Survival to get the ability to drop two turrets and enough in Guerilla to give them Rockets. My specific layout will change here shortly as I got the Legendary Commando Mod from Terramorphous last night.

+22% Burn Damage
+22% to cause Burn
+2700(ish) HP

+4 Sentry
+4 Ready
+4 Impact
+4 Expertise
+4 Healthy

As those are all the first Tier skills (excluding Preparation) I will point 1 point into each and effectively have them all capped out.

Builds will change as you get into playthrough 2 as the creatures are much faster, tougher, and do more damage. It could just be that I play 3+ player a lot though and solo it might not be all that bad.

Anybody have really embarrassing deaths? When I was going to find the midget riding a bullymong, I fell into the water several times, and found out freezing water damages you! I then died a few times when I was knocked off a ship or something and had to scramble to a ledge or something.
My main character is Axton at level 28. Killed Angel and the Sheriff. I have been building him with a spattering of all three trees, but with emphasis on guerrilla. Something like:
Preparation 5/5
Impact 5/5
Expertise 5/5
Ready 5/5
Laser Sight 3/5
I eventually want to get the slag barrel on the turret.
As with the previous game, I feel like I depend less on health drops, due to my skills and the Pointman class mod (which has saved my bacon numerous times).
Oh yeah, did anyone ever get/use the Bane? It's freakin' hilarious.

And has anyone found The Emperor smg at all? I don't care stats wise, it's just awesome to have a 40K reference in my Borderlands experience.

 Dr. Temujin wrote:
Anybody have really embarrassing deaths? When I was going to find the midget riding a bullymong, I fell into the water several times, and found out freezing water damages you! I then died a few times when I was knocked off a ship or something and had to scramble to a ledge or something.

Heh, this is actually somewhat of a thing for me. I killed both BNK3R and the Warrior in 1 shot with no deaths, and only a single FFYL on each of them. I kill Badass and Super Badass Constructors without ever getting knocked down, but against standard enemies I will kill everything in an area, and right as the last guy goes down his last shot will blow up a barrel next to me and I'll die because there is nothing around to Second Wind on. That's happened multiple times with each character I have played.

 Dr. Temujin wrote:
My main character is Axton at level 28. Killed Angel and the Sheriff. I have been building him with a spattering of all three trees, but with emphasis on guerrilla. Something like:
Preparation 5/5
Impact 5/5
Expertise 5/5
Ready 5/5
Laser Sight 3/5

I would highly recommend focusing on one tree until 31. Scattering points all around like that means it will take you ages to get into the lower tiers, and encounters are geared around you having those lower tier abilities as you level up. A tri-spec build can work at 50 with some classes (I did it in Borderlands 1 with Mordecai and it worked well enough) but not so much at low level. Then again, if it's been working for you, perhaps I'm wrong.....

 Dr. Temujin wrote:
I eventually want to get the slag barrel on the turret.

You know, I have actually been wondering about this ability. The turret does a LOT of damage by itself, especially in the Guerrilla tree, but the slag upgrade changes the damage type to slag, and slag weapons are significantly less effective against targets that are already slagged. In a group of people it could be incredibly useful since Axton would sacrifice personal DPS for the other three people to have a significant increase, but on a solo play through it would severely gimp the turret, which is a large portion of Axton's damage. If you are playing with friends, go for it, but if you are playing solo, I wouldn't bother.

Edit: I actually didn't realize this was attached to the final ability in the Guerrilla tree, and it makes me wonder how effective that ability really is for solo play.....

 Dr. Temujin wrote:
As with the previous game, I feel like I depend less on health drops, due to my skills and the Pointman class mod (which has saved my bacon numerous times).

Preparation does that. When your shield is full you are regenerating your full HP every 20 seconds which means you do not need to rely on health hypos being dropped any time you have a break from taking fire, and you go into every combat at full HP regardless of how the last combat ended. It's an excellent talent.

 Dr. Temujin wrote:
Oh yeah, did anyone ever get/use the Bane? It's freakin' hilarious.

I got it, then promptly sold it. I don't need a weapon that slows me down so much I can barely move, and screams incoherently at me every time I pull the trigger. It's a shame that they gave a weapon with such good stats such a stupid drawback. If it reduced speed like old Eridian weapons from the first game it would have been fine. If it talked to you when you criticaled or reloaded like the Morningstar, it would have been fine. A combination of both would have been annoying but liveable, but no. It slowed my movement by like 85% and screamed so loud I had to turn the game down or disturb my neighbors. Useless weapon.

 Dr. Temujin wrote:
And has anyone found The Emperor smg at all? I don't care stats wise, it's just awesome to have a 40K reference in my Borderlands experience.

Haven't seen it yet. Heard about it, but haven't seen it.

 Aldarionn wrote:
I killed both BNK3R and the Warrior in 1 shot

Could you go into more detail?

 Ahtman wrote:

 Aldarionn wrote:
I killed both BNK3R and the Warrior in 1 shot

Could you go into more detail?

Er, that might have been poor phrasing on my part. What I meant is I only took one attempt to kill both of those bosses, and only had a single second wind on each. I did NOT mean I literally fired a single bullet to kill them hehe. The fights felt epic and difficult, but I have gotten very good at avoiding damage and managing my cooldown with Gaige.

The survival regen health thing is great, thanks A!

You know, now that I think about it the 2x turrets are more useful DPS than the slag turret in the Guerrilla tree, especially if you yourself use a slag weapon, because that improves your TURRET'S DPS.

Here is a build that goes down Survival to the double turrets skill, allows the turrets to be affixed to walls and ceilings, gives you protective barriers for your turrets, grants increased duration on FFYL, shield regen, improved shield recharge rate and delay, a chance to ignore damage, and STILL has enough points to go down to Scorched Earth in the Guerrilla tree for rockets on your two turrets. It also picks up Willing for increased shield regen rate and decreased delay.

This build lets you throw longbow turrets while keeping a few points in Willing for the shield recharge, but loses some turret accuracy and you don't have rockets, and you sacrifice some turret cooldown.

It seems to me that Axton's Survival tree is really the best of the bunch for solo play, and Guerilla is better for team play because it slags enemies. Then again, I don't have a level 50 Axton so I really do not know how he plays at that level. Your mileage may vary.

The 2x turrets are absolutely, positively useless for the most part.

Guerilla is great for team play and solo as well.

 Kanluwen wrote:
The 2x turrets are absolutely, positively useless for the most part.

Guerilla is great for team play and solo as well.

Please elaborate. It would seem to me that doubling up on turrets would double your turret DPS. I don't understand how it's useless.

Basically, the turret is there to suppress enemies while Axton himself moves in for the kill or help Axton by doing things like slagging the target while applying volleys of rockets that keep the enemy's numbers down to more manageable levels (Guerrilla) or applying a massive damage boost while being incredibly versatile in placement and a massive damage burst at the start of a fight (Gunpowder's "Nuke Surprise!" turret).

In the case of the "Survival" tree, it is very much intended to be a support role for Axton with a full coop group of balanced players. The Phalanx Shield, Mag-Lock, increased up time for the turrets, etc are all aimed at having the turrets be the lynchpin of a stationary defensive spot rather than an offensive punch.

The only time I've ever seen "Survival" be useful is fighting Terramorphus, as you can stick the turrets to the roof of the fight area and it forces Terramorphus to attack the turrets...but he can't so it's essentially "glitching" the fight out.

So i see people like to dip into 2 skill trees....... kinda second guessing just sticking with one now (using guage). So far its gone decent but im only lvl 15 lol

When you get up to 50, you have points enough to "double dip" and essentially do a double tree build.

As a 2x turret guy that has an amazing amount of success with the build, and only really use them to shred things to itty bitty tiny pieces and not to suppress, I will have to disagree with Kanluwen on his assessment of using 2x turrets.

Downloading Captain Scarlett and her Pirate's Booty right now.

Also Ahtman, it's okay that you disagree with me. I tried out the Gemini build for a long time (levels 30-35) on Normal and then tried it on True Vault Hunter Mode.

On "Normal", it was brutal-ish. On TVHM...it was pretty blargh and paled in comparison to the amazing that is the Guerilla/Gunpowder combo mod.

Wait, Captain Scarlett is out already? Dammn that was fast.

1.29 GB download, and it's out on the 360 at least.

360 DLC always goes up at 2-5 AM EST.

Hmm. May have to spring for the 4 pack then.

I'll be downloading it tonight, and I am very much looking forward to it, but hopefully it does not have the same problem the Dr. Zed DLC had. That DLC only seemed to have a Playthrough 1, and we played it after completing playthrough 1 and everything was significantly under-powered for us. Granted, when I finished playthrough 1 in this game, I out-leveled the Warrior because I have done every single quest available except the Hyperion Circle of Slaughter and one quest in Sawtooth that I could not find.

It has both, I just tested.

Playthrough 1 is level 30ish and 2 is 50.

didn't even know it was coming, hopefully it'll be out for PS3 today too unlike Skyrim that forgot PS3 exists.

 Kanluwen wrote:
It has both, I just tested.

Playthrough 1 is level 30ish and 2 is 50.

Excellent. I'll probably wait until I hit 50 to play it then. I'm 35 or 36 with my Mechromancer I believe, so it would probably be dull if I do it now.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Downloading Captain Scarlett and her Pirate's Booty right now.

Also Ahtman, it's okay that you disagree with me. I tried out the Gemini build for a long time (levels 30-35) on Normal and then tried it on True Vault Hunter Mode.

On "Normal", it was brutal-ish. On TVHM...it was pretty blargh and paled in comparison to the amazing that is the Guerilla/Gunpowder combo mod.

That is odd, because I've been using it on TVHM, including defeating Terramorphous, and I have encountered no issues at all with it. It has been amazing all the time. Perhaps you are thinking I am talking about being just Survival? My split is something like 17 Guerrila and 28 Survival.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Downloading Captain Scarlett and her Pirate's Booty right now.

Also Ahtman, it's okay that you disagree with me. I tried out the Gemini build for a long time (levels 30-35) on Normal and then tried it on True Vault Hunter Mode.

On "Normal", it was brutal-ish. On TVHM...it was pretty blargh and paled in comparison to the amazing that is the Guerilla/Gunpowder combo mod.

That is odd, because I've been using it on TVHM, including defeating Terramorphous, and I have encountered no issues at all with it. It has been amazing all the time. Perhaps you are thinking I am talking about being just Survival? My split is something like 17 Guerrila and 28 Survival.

I honestly cannot see why it would be bad. The builds share a number of the same talents, and the primary difference is that you skip the slag barrel and instead take a whole second turret. Both fire rockets. Both have the same health. Both do the same damage. Both project force fields for protection, and Axtons other abilities and health regen are similar, if not MORE powerful with the Survival primary build. I just cannot straight up accept that it's a bad build without some raw numbers behind it.

The primary question is whether or not the increase to Axtons DPS is improved MORE by having a second turret, or by the turret slagging targets but doing less damage itself. Considering how much damage the turret does in comparison to Axton, I suspect the turret does more damage. Of course at level 50 that could change as more powerful weapons are acquired, making the damage bonus from the slag barrel a better choice because it scales and the 2x turrets do not. Having not played the class at that level, I do not know.

I'm like lvl 14 on my Gunzerker. I hear that Brawn - Rampage is really beast, so I'm going with that.