[Build] 4SS4SS4SSIN – Melee FL4K!

Borderlands 3 FL4K the Beastmaster
#28

Luckily it seemed like something was resetting it when I was actually out fighting things, I was trying to pay attention to my melee numbers and they didn’t seem to be going up anywhere near as high as they did vs the test dummy, and I was breaking my shield all the time. Something is definitely weird with the Ward shield though. Submitted a support ticket with my video of it stacking vs the test dummy.

Got some video of my melee FL4K build vs M4 Athenas while I was out trying to test this! :smiley:

Not a perfect run but it was fun. This really is my fav FL4K build. Is it the best FL4K build? Heck no. It’s kinda silly. But it actually works pretty decently at M4!

I need to edit my build post, made a few changes to it, especially since pets are just… really not killing things at M4. I show my current build/gear at about 13:20.

The highlight of the run is at about 18:00, my jabber tried so damn hard to kill this 1 Maliwan Guy and uhhhh. He did his best.

I mostly play co-op and this build is ridiculously fun if you have a friend playing a cryo build. :smiley: Can just run around smashing everything.

I definitely don’t have optimal gear yet. It’s so hard to find good rolls on things. If anybody out there is on PC and has a Knife Drain Commander Planetoid, DE4DEYE, or Cosmic Stalker com with rolls for bonus melee and action skill cooldown and you’d be willing to trade, hit me up.

#29

I didn’t realize until this video just how much my Zane contributes to your momentum. Just by virtue of holding aggro so you don’t have to run all the way back to re-Fade.

Also, I see you saw what I meant about Traunt’s crit spot!

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#30

Yep! :smiley: When playing co-op with your cryo Zane it’s a game of “run around and smash frozen enemies as fast as I can”, and a lot of the time I don’t even have to worry about if I’m invisible or not. This was actually the first time I’d played melee FL4K solo in a while, and like… I do fine against not-frozen enemies, I still have enough damage to do fine on M4, but I spent a looooottt of time wishing I had rolls for +cooldown on my class mod or artifact.

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#31

Just updated the main build post with adding the video and some changes I made to the build for M4.

I’m still happy that it seems like the Ward shield isn’t too hopelessly busted. I still have no idea why it was stacking so high vs the target dummy and what gets the stacks to reset.

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#32

Updated the build for level 57! So the cool thing about this level cap increase is we can get 3/3 Big Game now.

I know Big Game and the Cosmic Stalker com are bugged and won’t boost the damage of Interplanetary Stalker, but they do boost the duration which is awesome. Especially at M4 where it takes longer to kill things, being able to keep your stacks up for a long time is really nice.

The Ward glitch is still a thing and it’s super annoying. So it got figured out, if your shield gets broken in one hit any “on depletion” effects will stack. Stacks go away if your shield gets broken in more than one hit. I’ve been working around this lately by using an It’s Piss grenade that breaks my Ward shield in two hits instead of one, and running a com with +6 grenade capacity and a “on action skill start, regenerate 1 grenade” anointment on the It’s Piss so I don’t run out of grenades. The bad news is this is annoying af, the good news is this build works fine and is totally viable at M4 without accidental extra damage from Ward stacking. I realllllly hope this glitch gets patched…

6 Likes
#33

Hey I found something really weird with melee weapons last night and I’m trying to figure out the math!

So the Buttplug is supposed to hit from the front for 110% melee damage and double from the back. CoV guns can spawn with 120% blades, which should hit for slightly more from the front.

I’ve been messing around trying to make a cryo rakk Melee FL4K build that uses the Hydrafrost and other 120% bladed CoV guns. And I was testing some numbers and got super confused because my main Melee FL4K was consistently hitting for higher damage when using the Buttplug, even when hitting from the front.

If I take off my class mod and artifact, both of which have +melee rolls on them, the CoV gun hits for higher damage from the front. But as soon as I put on gear with +melee rolls, the Buttplug starts hitting for higher damage from the front.

Looking at melee math here [Guide] Melee / Face-puncher formulas and analysis and the bladed CoV gun seems to line up pretty well with the math and give the expected numbers. But the Buttplug does not add up and it seems like something about it might be in a different place in the melee formula than the rest of the usual additive melee bonuses (thanks @Prismatic for math idea… been trying to figure out the numbers here, haven’t gotten it to add up yet, but it seems to be on the right track).

Anybody out there know what the math is for the Buttplug? :stuck_out_tongue: Weird Buttplug Math Mystery. Words I never expected to say together.

Also from this it seems like the Buttplug is best melee weapon in the game even when hitting from the front if you’re running other +melee bonuses.

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#34

The elemental splash amounts are different. The Buttplug has a lower amount of radiation splash than the Hydrofrost.

Does melee have V1 and V2 multipliers? Because elemental splash ignores some V2 bonuses, so that might be what the Buttplug does.

2 Likes
#35

Good find. We’ve actually been trying to split the boost on the plug between spots in the formula since the Plug has an abnormal part for melee.

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#36

50
X
40

110?

Lol

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#37

Buttplug hits more than thr 110 in the card. There is a discussion before in the melee amara forims can’t remember where.

3 Likes
#38

Oh, ■■■■. Nat. We forgot to fill everyone in.

The damage is split between two parts. A fifty and a forty. They’re multiplicative in the formula. And the coms and artifact boosts go into the 40 while the fifty stays on it’s own

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#39

@Prismatic and @sammantixbb helped figure it out!

Base melee damage is 18 × 1.09^level

So the Buttplug has two different melee parts if you inspect it, one for 40% melee and one for 50% melee, and they go in different parts of the formula.

If it was one part that did 110% melee, the formula would look like this:

Buttplug-stab-to-front = (18 × 1.09^57) x (1 + 1.10) = 5138

But with two parts, the formula is actually:

Buttplug-stab-to-front = (18 × 1.09^57) x (1 + 0.4) x (1 + 0.5) = 5138

The number for both of these comes out the same with nothing else added in, and does equal a 110% bonus. But when you start to add in other melee boosts, which go into the early part of the formula along with the 0.4, the two formulas give very different numbers and only match in-game numbers when the two-part one is used. And it results in higher damage than expected. :smiley:

6 Likes
Melee Question - Highest bonus melee damage
#40

It sounds like the Ward shield is finally getting fixed!!! :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

So psyched to try this out without the Ward glitch.

#41

So I’m really happy about the Ward shield being fixed but with melee not scaling this may have a rough time at high Mayhem levels. Gonna keep poking at things and see if there’s any new gear or anointments that are good for this build.

I was excited about the “On action skill start, activate any effects that trigger on shield break or fill” anointment because I was REALLY hoping it would do cool things with roid shields. Being able to have roid active automatically during Fade Away with a shield not broken and the grenade slot freed up for a cryo grenade would have been amazing. But I just found that anointment on a purple roid/nova shield, tested it, and it doesn’t seem to activate roid, just nova. Seems like it just works on shield effects that happen at the start or end of a shield being broken, but not on effects that happen during the time it’s broken. Aww. That could have been super neat if it worked on roid. :frowning:

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#42

Melee is pretty rough right now at Mayhem 10. It doesn’t scale and there’s no real way to get it to scale.

In BL2, melee worked fine at high OP levels because you could get OP10 roid shields to scale your damage up. In BL3, M10 shields don’t seem to be a thing, and even if they were, BL3 roid shields are percentage-based instead of having a damage number that scales with their level like in BL2, so a high level roid shield doesn’t buff your melee damage any more than a low-level one does.

This build worked fine at old M4, and it works fine in new M4 to about M6 but higher than that things start getting bad.

There is one cool thing- The “300% damage to enemies above 90% health” (reverse Killing Bl0w!) anointment works on melee and means CoV 120% bladed guns now do more damage than the Buttplug vs shields or multiple health bars. So! There’s a new option for a best melee weapon to use in some situations, and that’s neat.

(It’s a shame the Buttplug can’t spawn with anointments, having that anointment on it would be awesome. Along with the hilarity of having an anointed Buttplug. Gearbox, if you’re out there, plz let Buttplug come with anointments to help with slightly better melee builds?)

Still… melee is pretty sad at M10.

First attempt at killing one Maliwan Guy, with no changes to my build:

Trying out the 300% damage anointment on a CoV gun to take out shields:

I finally managed to kill the M10 Maliwan Guy within one single Fade Away once I used a DE4DEYE com, a Radiation Stone Commander Planetoid instead of a Knife Drain one, and also used an Eruption for debuffs. 120% bladed CoV gun with the 300% damage anointment for the shield, then Buttplug for the rest.

This is… a lot of effort to kill one Maliwan Guy. But! Uhh. I did it? :sob:

7 Likes
#43

YEA! Show that Maliwan SOB who’s boss!
FL4K P4KK Represent! Down with corporate greed!

Also, now you’ve got me wondering, do the healing drones health scale with mayhem? If not, maybe my pet build can do a bit of damage in M10 XD

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#44

Have you tried the “Slayer” Easy modifier? Enemies glow when they’re below 15% health, and if you melee them, they instantly die and drop shield and health. (Yeah, this is a DOOM reference with the Glory kills).
Maybe that could help a bit at higher levels.

3 Likes
#45

Moxxy just put out a video of this with amara one shotting bosses with ties that bind. Maybe use an aoe boosting melee bomb artifact? And a fish slap with 150% while ase active

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#46

Ties that Bind did all the heavy lifting there. Without a way to make enemies share damage, I don’t think it’ll work. Giving it a try with pets to see how it goes.

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#47

Ties connects the damage sure but if you use a fish slap and plant a bomb on an enemy, aoe damage will hit too so if you can get an enemy close to another the same result can happen

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