It probably does. But I wasn’t seeing the frenzy stacks while leveling except occasionally, and we were just tearing things up quickly, so I decided the points should go elsewhere for my build. My friend with SMJabber loves frenzy. Keeps their melee damage high. 
Edited to clarify personal preference☺️
Hey so @davidmorganbray, yes, I was finally able to get through the Slaughter Shaft today on M4. It was not fun, not even a little. It took me about 4 hours and a ton of deaths - probably at least 20 or possibly more amongst the 5 rounds. It was ridiculous. I do not like M4 much at all.
I will post some pictures of my build below. I did have to tweak and experiment with gear for quite a while (most of my time was gear tinkering until I got it right), although my gear is not even close to ideal.
I don’t claim to be a very good player or anything, but the tips I can give are:
(1) Get a good anointed Brainstormer and use the s*** out of it. The Brainstormer is your friend. I hate the Brainstormer as a weapon, but the enemies are packed so tightly together in SS, and combined with Megavore and Leave No Trace, you can literally fire it forever and it just wrecks.
(2) Get a grenade that has the +50% corrosive damage effect upon ASE. This allows you to deal damage to armored enemies without having to actually use a corrosive weapon.
(3) Use the s*** out of the Maggie when enemies are not grouped up. The corrosive grenade anointment really helps the Maggie do major work.
(4) I have a Panacea Re-Charger with an anointment that regens 5% health/sec upon ASE. This shield is just fantastic and I did not realize how great it was until the SS. Not only does it immediately recharge upon depeletion, but it also has a health booster effect and a +5% health while full. Just a great shield. I know this is a really specific item, but it really helped me.
(5) I switched my COM from the Cosmic Stalker to the Deadeye - the extra damage really helps. Mine has +25% weapon damage and +4 to Two Fang. I really don’t like this COM for mobbing but the extra damage really helps for SS.
(6) Use the Rakks to proc your corrosive anointment and do it often. I never used Fade Away, not even once, during the run.
(7) I used the Gunslinger Jabber as my pet. The extra crit damage is nice.
I don’t think my build is ideal (I might steal a few points from Two Fang and put one more for 3/3 in All My BFFs and/or take all of them and put them in Furious Attack, upon reflection), but here it is:
Upon reflection, this actually might be my new build and gear to try to beat the Takedown. I hope this helps. Again, let me stress - this was not fun and took me a really long time to do. You really need some patience to do this with Fl4k. This would be so much easier with Guardian Perks.
Great work!
Loot wise I think it might be worth it…
I hope more try and add to this thread…
Yeah it’s definitely not a fun experience and sometimes the spawns and their gear just wreck and finding cover is intense…
Man why is there not a respec in the shaft?
Ideally I want to have a few loadouts that I can select between… Two would be better, but four would cover lots of senerios… So I don’t have respec just to fight different content…
I will be on the lookout for the items you mention.
I’ve been looking for that DE4DEYE… But I have one with 31% shotgun damage so perhaps thats will be more useful…
That shield sounds good.
I assume you are using an ammo perk to restock the brainstormer?
If you’re running Brainstormer, Two Fang will only give you so much extra damage but you will constantly have full Furious Attack Stacks. I don’t know how two fang works…I even stood in front of the dummy with it and the numbers on the Brainstormer were not at all what I expected for my understanding of it.
@davidmorganbray There were no ammo issues at all with this in the SS. With the enemies grouped so close together, all the crits from the Brainstormer’s tesla effect via Megavore, and then proc’ing Leave No Trace, it really just was not a problem. I found that very surprising, one of the more surprising parts of the build. I suspect ammo would be a way bigger problem on the Takedown or on another bigger map, but in SS (where you can buy ammo between rounds), it did not matter.
@sammantixbb Agreed. As I said, I don’t think my build was ideal, but it still worked pretty well. The Deadeye COM selection was less about the skills and more about the COM’s passives and perk or extra damage to all the heathy, shielded, armored enemies in the SS. I am not sure if maybe another COM would be better for this kind of a build? I might try it at some point.
I am with you on Two Fang and the Brainstormer - my understanding of Two Fang is that it should not benefit multi-pellet weapons very much, especially shotguns. All I can say is there were a metric ****ton of tesla effects going on in that Slaughter Shaft, so however it was working - it was working! 
One of my biggest conclusions from all this - the Brainstormer might actually be one of the single most meta-endgame weapons for BL3. I do not really enjoy using it, but I must admit that it is ridiculously powerful if you have a bunch of enemies grouped up. I had not really played with it too much until yesterday. I tried it on Zane and did not find it to be that great, but on Fl4k, it just wrecks everything. Comically so, in fact.
I might do some more testing on this setup and do a build post. I have not seen anyone running anything quite like this and it was surprisingly effective.
@davidmorganbray You made a comment about loot. I did want to add that in terms of the M4 loot in the SS after the whole thing was over, the results were not any better than they would have been on M3. There were tons of legendaries in there, but in terms of efficiency, with Fl4k at least, you probably are better off farming Graveward or something else quick like that.
My DE4DEYE has no points in 2 Fang. That means more points for (Whatever Fast and Furryous joke I wanna make. It’s normally a three point skill, so, Tokyo Drift) and Go For The Eyes. Honestly. If Furious Attack worked for the pet damage, it would be perfect to use the Brainstormer to get to ten immediately, then issue attack command while firing still. Boom. Pet damage.
But yeah, Two Fang is supposed to just add a projectile. Idk what it’s actually doing though. Gotta keep testing
The Brainstormer would be a really difficult one to test with two Fang because of the nature of the weapon’s special effect and needing more than one enemy target to test it (i.e., no testing on target dummy).
I will say that Two Fang works fantastically with the Atlas Q-System, which is one of Fl4k’s best mobbing weapons IMO. So I usually spec it. The good thing about the Deadeye COM I have is that I don’t even have to actually spec Two Fang and can spend the points elsewhere and still get the benefit.
I’m going to try your build today, bar a few items, and see how it fairs up…
Yeah re loot. I did notice as I got past the first 3 waves with the build Steeveyb mentioned, that it dropped only 2 Legendaries, both without anointments…
That’s pretty bad IMO - as it doesn’t reflect difficulty… It’s a real shame if M4 loot is not noticiably better than M3 - as I’m not engaged by M3 anymore
As I am sure you probably understand, on SS with this build and with Fl4k in general, you will go into FFYL quite a bit. He has issues with health and shield regen generally. The up-close and personal nature of the Brainstormer does not help that. But if you have either a terror health regen build or some other method of health regen (like the shield that I had), it really helps. An artifact with health regen would help too. Every little bit counts.
Good luck!
Ok I have done some testing. And I think that the build that Steeveyb suggested is slightly more rounded for solo play, with my current gear and maybe my style of play.
However using the strategies you describe (terror through rakks) makes all the difference at MM4 SS… And I would encourage you to try that build. As it gives enough Rakk to trigger terror, and the Spiderant Scorcher is a seriously hard fellow with that build… Furthermore, my gear at present meant that I had to go into fade away to grab some ammo. Working on a solution to this though… if it ever drops…
And yeah still to find one of those shield’s you mentioned…
In co-op using the UI in game is problematic for everyone, so your gear and build I assume works well for that …I’m now looking for the weapons to provide the terror so I can co-op most effectively…
Also my Brainstormer was just not as good as my Trevonator - so I need to find a better Brainstormer…
Back to the RNG Grind…
I will take a look at the build you suggested. As I said, my gear and build for my run was not very ideal at all, because the grenade was terrible (literally just a purple, non-elemental singularity grenade with the 50% corrosive upon ASE, found in a vending machine) and the Brainstormer has a 50% cryo while terrified effect. I actually would not have used the Brainstormer at all, had I not thought to try it for shield-stripping, but then when I tried it, and you apply all that corrosive effect from the grenade anointment to all those teslas, it ends up doing a ton of work. My Maggie is fine as it has a 15% life steal upon ASE, which again helps with survival. Ideally I would like some better gear for my other two weapons slots, but let’s be real, Borderlands does not pay the bills! I own a business and have a family, so I don’t get to play as much as I would like.
My artifact is really good - Last Stand with action skill cooldown, 40% magazine size, and 30% shield recharge rate. Combined with the Re-Charger, my Fl4k is much more tanky than normal, especially without the shield regen Guardian Perk. I would recommend you find a Last Stand artifact, for sure.
I believe the terror health regen anointments, for Fl4k, are the most powerful end-game shield and grenade anointments due to the survival issues. Fl4k has plenty of damage. I would like some better terror gear.
Hope you can find some better stuff too! Good luck!
Yeah I’ve been running a purple Last Stand for ages… better stats than the legendary alternatives I found…
Thanks for the input. With the current RNG it seems that BL’s wants to be much more important than family, work, etc…
I’m off sick atm, waiting for NHS specialists - so I’ve got time to kill. But even then the grind is real.
Wish you the best, friend! Enjoyed our exchange here. Would be interested to hear how you end up doing and whether you are able to complete the SS. It is tough on M4!
Thanks for the encouragement…
Yeah I update this thread if I can complete the SS solo - before they put GR back… Otherwise it’s not really a fair test…
Hey David, we spoke earlier today in the thread I made for my GammaVore Build video. I just solo’d the SS in mayhem 4 without going down, I recorded round 5 which took about 10 mins to complete. Happy to upload this if it would be of some help.
Regardless my advice for SS on any level of difficulty with flak is to run a red fang build, it’s without a doubt your best option in the shaft as it allows you to control the aggro of the huge number of enemies, levelling the play field in a sense and lets you take advantage of the invincibility mechanic of the pet while under the effect of gamma burst. My GammaVore build functions similarly to my eternal pet build but has significantly more dps, here’s a vid of my older build soloing SS if you want a general idea of how effective it can be https://youtu.be/AkKmbamnAbg
Did you use Gammavore or Red Fang?
A link to the build you suggest would be helpful…
Also, if you have time a video would be great…
my gammavore build uses the red fang class mod, so both. Put simply the dps comes from gamma burst + megavore + anointed effects, the survivability comes from the red fang class mod letting you draw aggro away from you onto your invincible pet
Cool I will be trying to get as close to your build as possible starting now …and I’ll let you know how it goes…
Thanks again for the help.
here’s the video of the build, I discuss the skill tree and gear choice in it and show it in action. You don’t need to use the exact same gear if you don’t have it but it’s the playstyle of the build that is what makes it effective at a base level
