i had zero issue with killavolt other than never having a shield lol all u have to do is constantly bunny hop around the arena and watch where your standing so u dont stand on any electrified panels…however saying that of all the bosses ive fought so far he was definitely the most annoying due to how u cant stand anywhere without constantly jumping
You can force that opening, so it’s not entirely based on RNG.
So after beating him 1st try on normal and only finding out after that there was a consensus in the community that he was very hard/unfair/unbalanced. Am now on TVHM M1 and just fought him again. 1st attempt I just went in with the random stuff I had to see what would happen and I got his shield a little past half down and got taken out, but I was playing really lazy and it didn’t feel like I got taken out because he was cheap. I got taken out because I was lazy and sucked the 1st attempt. For the 2nd attempt I decided to negate him the easy way, with the 100% shock shield I got in my 1st playthrough. He was still a little spoongy for my particular weapon loadout, but unequivocally a gimme with the shock shield.
You wouldn’t know offhand which quest that is?..I’m going to go get me that Transformer shield as soon as I find out the quest, and then attempt KV again, for the 100th time lol
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Late story mission, after getting Tannis’s machine thingy back from her lab place, I think.
An actual story mission? Oh wow, I must have missed that completely or sold it by mistake
Thanks for the info 
That’s how i killed him , first try. I think i kinda got lucky tho. I happened to have a good self aiming Assault rifle that allowed me to jump around the room like a mad man because i honestly had no idea what i was supposed to do haha.
You can get the one pump chump legendary shotgun on the same map, however, the guy that drops it can kill you in one hit and I found him harder than Killavolt. Had to kill him with that poop shooter radiation gun, you can look up one pump chump on youtube to see how to get it.
Anyway I had that shotgun when I went in to fight Killavolt, If you stay close to him, running in circles around him, he will never light up the whole floor, he only seems to do that when you fight at range. Try not to let him face you though at close range because he will kick you and it hurts, if he kicks you run out to medium range and in circles until your shield comes back up, if you can circle strafe and keep shooting him staying fairly close the fight will be over soon and you will win.
Also I checked the vending machines for shields until I found one that had 20% shock resist and used that, wasn’t anything special, just for the shock resist.
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This might be an interesting tactic to use against KV, especially for those of us who are struggling against this ridiculously OP Boss
Thanks for sharing!
Circle strafing him doesn’t do anything about his shield if you’re solo. The only reason you’re doing it is because he puts a line of electricity on the floor in a cone in front of him. If he doesn’t get staggered by shooting his shield he doesn’t open up, and you can forget about shooting him in the back to any meaningful degree alone because he’s usually only down for the amount of time it takes to reload anyway. Other enemies with shields are far easier to stagger and to hit in areas that the shield doesn’t cover, he’s not like fighting a regular shield bandit.
The attack that electrifies the entire floor will probably down you. You can jump around, but you’re probably going down, and you’re definitely going down if he times a shield charge in conjunction with this attack. It’s impossible to avoid, if he does it and you’re playing solo you probably lost. The only hope you have is that you can crawl up under his shield and DPS him down before you bleed out.
He’s not terribly hard to fight; I get his shield down no problem every time, I get him to about half health no problem every time, and then he electrifies the entire floor and it’s a loss. Every time. I’ve never successfully stayed up through that attack, jumping around or not.
This isn’t a story boss, or even an important fight. He’s just a side quest with bad rewards. If it was meant to be that difficult there’d be a reason, but there’s not, and the worst part (and what some people don’t seem to be getting) is that it’s not the fight that’s difficult; he has an ability that’s broken, and you either win by luck or you got a piece of gear by luck to nullify it. If the duration of the one ability that electrifies the entire floor was halved, it’d still be just as challenging of a fight as it is now; it would just fix it to make it actually possible to do without luck or a specific type of item. That’s a pretty good sign that it’s not supposed to be the way it is and something is broken.
Which is why you stagger him.
Shotguns do the trick, as does melee, and many people have said on this post and other posts like it.
This is why you have four guns, or just use a shotgun so you’re not depleting your ammo pool on his physical shield.
What I see a lot of people not getting is that there are counterplay methods. You can stagger him one of two ways, probably three assuming grenades work too like they do on other shielded enemies (they make them jump or roll away) then unload on his exposed crit for heavy damage, rinse and repeat.
The tips are here, in abundance, from people who have successfully done this themselves, but they are being largely ignored. If a player chooses to do the same futile thing over and over, wasting ammo on his shield rather than finding other methods of staggering him or making him use his shield bash attack to lower his shield, then it’s not the boss that’s broken, it’s that player’s poor strategy. Making the same complaint does not make this fight winnable, but maybe taking the advice of players who have done it will help.
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I think it’s been mentioned but the transformer shield makes this a breeze.
But the first time I did him on normal I went down a few times but he wasn’t unbalanced, tough yes when floor starts shocking.
exactly as i stated melee hits and vladof sprinker granades or some tediore throw reloads will force him to open up and then shoot him in da diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick
It seems Killavolt was somewhat bugged and is getting addressed in the upcomign patch…
Thanks Gearbox, for listening to the players that ACTUALLY understands how a boss should behave and ACTUALLY understands about game balance!
I beat him with Amara at 13 without actually brawling… I personally don’t think I’m a good player, but I didn’t really have much trouble with it.
There are 3 moves of note in the fight:
- His barrage attack: He fires this one off at regular intervals, he leads you with the attack – If you jump as he is firing, a lot of those bullets will miss both you and the floor as he follows your current trajectory. If you change directions while running (clockwise to counterclockwise or vice versa), a lot of the shots will miss too.
- His charge attack: He leads this attack off by shooting 2 lines of yellow down the arena; run outside those lines before they get electrified. He will then run at the player’s location. Just keep running and he will hit the wall and stagger with his back facing you. As I am a rather cautious player, I found this to be one of the few times I could safety hit him.
- His full ground electrify attack: As mentioned before, keep jumping against this attack. If there is a piece of electrified ground before the attack goes off, it will be safe first. Either way you should make it out alive.
Several gear tips
While not as game changing as the Transformer, these pieces are really easy (or guaranteed) to be found and can be gotten way before you reach Promethea:
- Have a Hyperion smg. Those weapons have front facing shield and rather low zoom. While he is firing his barrage against you, turn to face him while jumping and activate the shield, then go back to sprinting when you hit the ground again. That should block the few bolts of energy that you don’t manage to dodge. You can also take potshots at him while doing this. As this shield recharges separately from your personal shield, you can use it to block the bullets and it will recharge while your normal shield takes the hits from the electrified ground.
- If you have completed the Golden Calves quest on Pandora, you get the shield: Golden Touch. This shield heals you for 5% of your max HP when your shields are full. This helps a lot, not only with topping you off while you run around him, but also it saves those healthpacks if the arena wide aoe attack is feeling a bit tight
- Any fast firing, high dps weapon. I recommend CoV weapons as they have a high magazine size and generally decent fire rate (functionally there is very little difference between “breaking in X shots” and “X sized magazine”). Use this for second winds (spray and pray works at close/medium range) and to burn the boss while you have the chance
Other tips:
- Don’t forget to use your Action Skill! I was playing Amara with her phasecast on with the Healing Augment. While I didn’t do damage to the boss with it, it was still nice to get healing from the mobs that spawn.
- Open all of the chests while he is in his easiest phase, that way you don’t have to wait for the opening animation when you really need something.
- Speed>Greed. There is no enrage timer so when choosing between dealing damage or not taking damage, focus on not taking damage.
- This fight is optional. If it is too hard, go do something else and come back later
- Reload on the run! That way you always have a full mag to unload on him when he is vulnerable
- Don’t shoot for the sake of shooting, you’d just end up wasting ammo. Wait until he is vulnerable
Hope this helps!
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whole floor lights up mooks die. even jumping I was nearly dead when this happened and it was a simple matter to finish me off for hours at a time. I only avoided this damage by hopping into Iron Bear when he did the whole floor.
I seriously dont think you guys even are telling the truth to yourselves at this point and just wanting to look cool.
This did not happen to me (XBOX, Level 17, obviously first playthrough). I was ignoring them (mooks) in the fight, perhaps it helped with their survival. They were a bit hard to spot when I went down, since they were hugging the perimeter, but a couple of them were there, so I could second wind off them. May be I was lucky.
In my case, I never had the whole floor light up at all. I guess RNG was in my favour for once!
There are times when Killavolt won’t electrocute the whole floor. Sometimes he won’t even call for mobs to spawn in his arena, which can either make theifhgt easier or harder, depending of your preferences…
I just glad his bs attack was indeed bugged and they seem to have fixed it up (now when he does that attack, a portion of the ground won’t light up and you can stand there in safety).
However Zane’s shield is still bugged in that arena, and I assume it’s the same for Tediore guns.
Died several times watching him kill the mooks with his attacks just as I was aiming