Elemental Amara Build - Do Harm Stacking and Ties That Bind - TVHM M4

Borderlands 3 Amara the Siren
#53

Hey man @Twixled, a thought came to mind. Not sure if I should DM or open this up to public (crowdsource ftw), but regarding 1)how does CDR work…check it:

If there truly is a CDR cap we’re not aware of, that means you don’t need to run Avatar. If you don’t take the capstone Avatar, you’ll still have 15 stacks of Rush with Phasezerker, or 150% supposed CDR.

Can you test that? 18/(1+1.5) = 7.2s, which is still well below the potential CDR cap. If the cooldown is STILL ~9-10s…then WOW we just freed up SO many skill points in the Mystical Assault tree.

We’re talkin Adding Melee.

11 Extra points here: can spec towards Laid Bare + Remnant (damage) or Sustainment/Indiscriminate (Melee can LIfesteal with Illuminated Fist + Sustainment).

OR. Lean into melee more, while maintaning capped CDR: Best of both Melee and Mystical Amara Builds.

You get your bare minimum in Mystical Assault (all you REALLY need is Do Harm 5/5 and maybe 2/5 Tapestry for 100% status chance) and nab Blitz, Guardian Angel for some serious melee damage, status damage, and spread from Fist of the Elements tree.

Now you can run Face Puncher gun, Unleash the Dragon relic (insane, maybe bugged damage, you can melee for 36k and the damage will tick for 56k/s, spreads with Wildfire), Brawler shield or Black Hole Shield (singularity yourself over and over with Mindfulness), Quasar. Maybe think about Catharsis (which does self damage) + Transformer, allowing you to get big shield boosts on enemy death shock novas, though it might not outheal the ignite proc on yourself.

This is all contingent on what the cooldown is for a 15 rush stack Phasezerker mod for Ties that Bind. I’m not in front of my BL3 computer now–somebody please confirm that it’s still ~9-10s cooldown? If it’s a little off, then Restless will be a stronger option to reach the hypothetical cap. If this is confirmed, Holy ****

TL;DR for the lurkers:
This can be a 150% CDR melee build, abusing both amara’s melee prowess + Ties that Bind interaction.

#54

Sooo when I was first testing Restless vs non-Restless, it made a big difference because I realized I didn’t spec into Avatar. I think I got something like an extra 3 or 4 seconds? I can try it again.

10 less stacks also makes it take longer to really stack up your DH stacks.

I’ll certainly look into it! I was thinking about ways to make this work with melee

#55

Hey there,

I just did some testing regarding CDR. I currently have ~10 CDR from guardian ranks and as far as I know, it is currently not possible to deactivate this, so I was only able to test with this as a basis. These are the results for the cooldown duration of Ties That Bind:

  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank: ~ 11.3 s
  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank + Phasezerker: ~ 10s
  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank + Phasezerker + Avatar: ~ 8.8 s
  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank + 21 % CDR from Relic : ~ 7.5 s
  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank + 21 % CDR from Relic + Phasezerker: ~ 7 s
  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank + 21 % CDR from Relic + Phasezerker + Avatar: ~ 6.5 s

I did not attempt to keep the Rush stacks up while Ties That Bind was on cooldown, so I actually lost a few stacks during the process. If you keep the stacks up, the cooldowns will probably be slightly lower, but not by much.

I tested this several times and got consistent results, so I am pretty confident about the numbers.

This means that if you have CDR from guardian rank and a relic with CDR, the CDR from Phasezerker is pretty negligible (with or without Avatar) and the CDR added by Avatar even more so. If you do not use a CDR relic, the impact is much larger and I suspect the same is true if you do not get CDR from your guardian rank.

EDIT: The numbers mentioned above are wrong. They are a result of the bug described here: Phasezerker Amara and Restless (Spoilers, it's bad.). See my post below for correct numbers.

#56

Do you have points in Restless?

Just clarifying if you got from an 18s cooldown to 11.3 with just 10% CDR from Guardian Rank.

#57

No, I did not get any points in Restless. I can add some more tests with that added in the mix. I am also quite confused how I get from 18 down to 11.3 with just the Guardian Rank… oO (I double checked like 5 times that none of my other gear gives me any CDR :D)

#58

Might be worth quoting this here. Do you get the same results when you test backwards (starting with 10% GR, 21% Relic, PZerker, Avatar)? Or after relaunching BL3?

#59

I did not know about this. This probably explains the jump from 18 to 11.3. I’ll do some more tests with restarting the game between every test.

1 Like
#60

If we really could ditch avatar, it might get pretty interesting!

Thinking the melee build might look something like this? I’d need to mess with it a bit and probably read around to see what melee skills are amazing and which are meh. That second VT point could also go to Personal Space or Do Unto Others. I don’t think 100% is entirely necessary

#61

I don’t think you get 10% cooldown per rush stack with Phasezerker mod. I have that class mod and ran some basic tests.

With 25 rush stacks and 25% from skills, The fastest I could get phaseslam to come back was 20 seconds. Ties that Bind takes about 10 seconds to cooldown.

Considering I should be seeing cooldown that equals 275% cooldown bonus based on that legendary class mod description, phaseslam should be coming back in 9.33 seconds. Ties that Bind should be coming back in 4.8 seconds.

Obviously those numbers would be overpowered, so I’m just curious what the actual bonus is from the Phasezerker mod at full 25 stacks.

Is the gun damage buff also not exactly x25?

#62

Ok, so it looks like the buggy behavior with CDR not being reset when removing skills was indeed the problem with my measurements. I did some more tests with restarting the game every time in between. The numbers I got from these tests look much more reasonable:

  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank: ~ 17 s
  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank + Phasezerker: ~ 14.1 s
  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank + Phasezerker + Avatar: ~ 11.7 s
  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank + 21 % CDR from Relic : ~ 14.8 s
  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank + 21 % CDR from Relic + Phasezerker: ~ 12.2 s
  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank + 21 % CDR from Relic + Phasezerker + Avatar: ~ 10.4 s
  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank + 25 % CDR from Restless: ~ 14.1 s
  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank + 25 % CDR from Restless + Phasezerker: ~ 12.1 s
  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank + 25 % CDR from Restless + Phasezerker + Avatar: ~ 10.3 s
  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank + 25 % CDR from Restless + 21 % CDR from Relic: ~ 12.4 s
  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank + 25 % CDR from Restless + 21 % CDR from Relic + Phasezerker: ~ 10.8 s
  • 10 % CDR from Guardian Rank + 25 % CDR from Restless + 21 % CDR from Relic + Phasezerker + Avatar: ~ 9.3 s

Again, this is without keeping the Rush stack up, so when doing that, the cooldowns will be a bit lower.

As we can see from this, Avatar actually removes between 1.5 and 2.4 seconds of the cooldown, depending on how much CDR we have from other sources. Restless removes between 1.1 and 2.9 seconds, a CDR relic removes between 1 and 2.2 seconds and Phasezerker (without Avatar) removes between 1.6 and 2.9.
Basically, all of the CDR sources are quite similar, but Phasezerker and Phasezerker + Avatar seem offer the most CDR while at the same time suffering the least from diminishing returns.

I also did some more tests on what the buggy behavior is actually about. I was not able to get any buggy behavior with adding / removing items that give CDR, but I noticed there was some really strange behavior when resetting the skill points. Te me it looked like the CDR from the rush stacks + Phasezerker was getting “snapshotted” when resetting the skillpoints, but I don’t know if that is what actually happens.

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#63

Does the Avatar skill give a cooldown buff?

#64

It increases the maximum amount of rush stacks you can have, which in combination with the Phasezerker class mod increases your CDR.

#65

Ok gotcha. I’ve been loving this build so far.

1 Like
#66

Hey @Twixled, thanks for this build! I made a video showcasing this build, but the build I was using was from the other thread by the other guy (sorry, I forgot your name! :frowning: ) and before seeing this thread, so the build I used in the video was slightly different, but basically the same nonetheless.

Is Restless not really doing anything for this build? Is it only for this build, or is it not actually doing anything?

Anyways, will prolly post the vid here in a few hours. I’ll redirect any questions I get to this thread, as this is very informative. Thanks again!

#67

Restless doesn’t do much because the Phasezerker mod gives us so much CDR that we get some harsh diminishing returns from it.

There may be some optimal loadout where you put just a few points in Restless to maximize your CDR without hitting a big DR wall. Which I don’t think will happen as long as we’re taking Avatar with Phasezerker. Maybe in a melee build where we don’t go all the way down to Avatar, Restless might be good. I’ll be looking into it soon

1 Like
#68

When you invest heavily into CDR (Phasezerker, CDR artifact, possibly even an CDR shield) it will reduce the CDR by another 1 second. That doesn’t sound all that good. But in prolonged fights, this can enable you to cast Phasegrasp 5 times instead of just 4x. This is basically 25% more often and can make all the difference. A really hard-hitting enemy being taken out of the equation and therefore increasing your survivability while also increasing your damage an additional time? Is that worth it? Decide for yourself.
This method of looking at cooldown reduction can be universally applied. Don’t directly look at the cooldown timer. Just translate e.g. “+25% cooldown reduction” into “25% more often being able to use your action skill” because this point of view is free of diminishing returns. That gives you a better idea of its worth.
Because of that I’m able to use Phasegrasp 3 time as often as I’d normally be able to without making use of Avatar’s mechanic.

#69

I don’t believe it does make any difference. Yeah, you could get an entire extra use in the same time period. But that would require you to use Phasegrasp on cooldown 10 or so times in a row to make those extra seconds add up to another Phasegrasp, which is unlikely if you were to use it effectively every time.

#70

As long as you use it only once directly when it comes off cooldown it does make a difference. Most fights I came across so far I use it as soon as it’s available again. There’s basically no downtime in between.
And no, you won’t have to do that 10 times in a row to get that result. This is independent of the amount of uses but way more noticable in longer fights. I just picked 4x vs 5x just as an example.

#71

Hey @Twixled,

I just realized that the build suggests to put 3 points into Remnant. In some other thread, I read that putting 3 points might not be worth it because most of the damage comes from the overkill damage anyways. So I decided to do some testing myself. What I did was basically checking how much damage the orb does to the skags in The Drought. I checked with both 1 Point speced into Remnant and 3. These were the results:

  • The 2 additional points into Remnant add slightly above 1k damage to the orb, which is more or less in line with the skill description.
  • Depending on the amount of overkill damage (using the Hellwalker), the orb deals between ~2k and ~8k damage.
  • DOT kills do not trigger the orb, which is in line with the skill description which says that the orb can betriggered by gun kills or action skill kills.
  • Interaction with Ties That Bind: When killing an enemy by the link, an orb will be triggered. However, when killing several enemies via the link at the same time, only one orb is created. It doesn’t matter if the shot enemy is also killed by the shot, all of the tethered killed enemies will release exactly one orb in total. It seems to be quite random from which of those enemies the orb is released from.
  • The chosen target of the orb seems to be a bit random. It is always an enemy, that is “near”, but from my experience it is not alwayst the nearest one.
  • Orbs can hit into terrain quite often, if they don’t have a clear path towards their chosen target.
  • Orbs sometimes simply flow into the sky and explode there (probably when no target is near enough to be chosen).
  • Orbs can sometimes choose a target and fly towards it, but explode before they reach it.
  • Orbs home in for exactly one target, but can hit several enemies when they explode.
  • Orbs (and their explosion) do not seem to be able to damage the player.

All in all, I think Remnant is quite lackluster for this particular build, for several reasons:

  1. From my experience, this build quite often results in enemies being killed by DOTs, in which case Remnant does nothing.
  2. The whole purpose of this build is to kill several enemies at the same time using Ties That Bind. This will only ever create one orb.
  3. The damage of the orbs is not very high to begin with. Depending on your used weapons, it is often less than one shot (it certainly is when compared to the Hellwalker).

If you choose to use Remnant, it probably really is better to only use one point. As mentioned above, the difference in damage is only slightly above 1k, which is pretty negligible when compared to your other damage sources. On the other hand, it is “free damage”.

What are the alternatives?

  • Awakening: I don’t actually have a clue, what “Amara’s Rush stacks gain increased effectiveness” actually means. Does anybody? Maybe we should do some testing if there are any consequences for Do Harm and CDR + Gund damage from Phasezerker.
  • Wrath: Might be better, depending on how much gun damage modifiers you already have. needs testing, to see how much it actually does.
  • Restless: As explained in the build, this is probably not worth it. In particular, putting in only 3 points will probably decrease the cooldown duration of Ties that Bind by less than 1 second. Depending on how much CDR you have on your gear, it might be worth taking though.
  • Violent Tapestry: Probably not worth it. From my experience, the build already causes quite a lot of status effects.
  • 2 Additional points is Alacrity: Depending on the gun you use, this might make a difference in “feeling”. I doubt it does a lot regarding damage. That would need testing however.

What are your thoughts on Remnant?

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#72

Also, if you’re really judicious about how often you press the action skill key and you’re always making sure it has fully returned each time you’re pumping up the damage, you can still get 2x casts from Avatar fairly consistently.