Honestly my thought on it was more to be using it as a crowd control rather than a mob tripod to punch, but your points are pretty consistent. I know jack over ■■■■ about it it, I was just trying to think about how I’d play punchies at low levels - the combo of damage reductions and a quick CD seemed more attractive.
Then again I’m the idiot running avatar so … >.>
That’s not a bad thought, think Maya and mobbing games in general, but as far as a melee build is concerned a movement option and huge burst of AoE damage ultimately outweighs single target CC. Especially since you can reap the benefits from Revelation, Jab Cross, and Do Harm.
I may have undersold Helping Hands. It’s not that 40% DR is bad, rather impermanent DR vs permanent +40% max health (Mindfulness) swings in favour of the health increase, and with two percentage based health regen skills (Clarity and Samsara) more max health means more health per second. I’m not saying that you’re wrong or your idea is bad, but in a min/max build where you want minimum investment to reach the capstone, after all the “gooder” skills you’re stuck choosing between Mindfulness and Helping Hands. Were there enough points I’d have both, but the math is in favour of Mindfulness and it’s more consistent being a permanent stat increase.
I really want that for my melee build. I can live without Blitz, it’s good but not super great for a capstone, but I’d have to sacrifice Jab Cross, or only have one point in it and sacrifice either Guardian Angel or Do Unto Others, as well as Illuminated Fist (though I have a COM that adds a point to it) and Soulfire. I just can’t justify it, but when the level cap increase comes it’s the skill I’ve got my eye on.
This is the full build I’m aiming for at the moment, but some twinking is gonna be needed. Basically already at this point I’m producing more rush stacks than I really thought possible, so a lot of the stuff in FoE that I thought was required is not, and dots look to be working good so moving into 5/5 anima seems like a good get, or even reallocating some pots to get an additional rank of sustainment may be a good get… but honestly I’m not sure the build needs it. Plan of attack is always be using shock guns for oh, 70% or so increased gun damage that also does fire damage that also fuels my huge nuke of an Action Skill. All of that being tallied through 4% life leech seems like all I need… but time will tell.
But yeah, I’m spec’d as “black mage” not fighter. I worked up an AS build that relied heavily on melee, but it was more like an X/21/X build than a straight brawl build.
You may want to think about it that way- “I lose jab cross but gain ■■■■■■■ tempest” lol.
Is this your ABC build? I recall a few months back we were theory crafting with @sammantixbb and I think you conceived a build similar to this back then? I’m waiting for level cap before speccing into my Indiscriminate Binder, it was always meant as an endgame build.
Damn I love Amara, there’s so much you can do with her, melee is pretty cheesy and all but she’s a very deep character.
It is, or a modified version. It’s like I said, the rocks between 16-23 are rough because all that is scaled to mid levels when most classes are supposed to get a big damage reduction or damage buff, and this just… doesn’t get that.
It all starts to click around 23, and now it kind of feels really similar to Bee style BL2 play where it’s a lot of ducking and weaving and then blowing up everything on the screen. <3
I may just try out your build when I start farming and experimenting in TVHM. I think this character will have a deep metagame and I can’t wait to start exploring how to build/play her optimally. I’m going to have two, my brawler babe and whatever elemental/gun build I eventually settle on, Indiscriminate Binder still looks ideal to me on paper but the three of us have some interesting ideas already and we’re not the only ones around here theory crafting her for endgame.
I just can’t get over how she feels so much like Maya yet is so radically different, I’m blown away by this character!
Uh, anyway, back OT, Amara gets good from the get go and only gets better. Don’t be afraid to experiment, she’s a complex character so she’ll be difficult to optimise but it will pay off in the endgame!
if you get buttplug early (mine is L4) and an 80% melee shield you can get through most enemies fine. i’m playing normal mode. i meleed a chubby slag (took a lot of hits), the undertaker - pretty much everything on the ground. got chewed up by the legendary varkid but haven’t found a corrosive yet. putting all points into health (mostly regen). i’ve just hit L7 (thanks chubby!) and feeling relatively powerful. no idea yet how i’m going do deal w/ the mouthpiece though - any suggestions?
update: i took him down first try (lvl 9) w/ a lotta buttplug melee strikes (and 80% melee shield) and a well-timed phaseslam
I was struggling early on till around LvL 20 as I used my skill points in Brawl & Mystical. I then changed it up and went Fist of Elements, Brawl, and a little Mystical currently at LvL 31 but feeling way stronger. I still have a ways to go but I’m also not running the best gear for her either so alot of room to grow.
I went full-on Brawl, not using any other skill tree until I reached Blitz. Not sure that’s necessarily the best way, as the Soulfire (incendiary) augment from the elemental tree makes a big difference. But anyway, the only point where I was struggling was against Billy the Anointed. I think that was the only time I died except for some guy in the Lectra City subway who instakilled me with one punch of his metal arms.
Brawl’s got a lot of great health/survivability skills as well as some serious close combat damage. Amara’s melee attacks are savage if you take all the skills, and she’s very good with shotguns (Personal Space seems to be underrated–it’s brutal).
Somewhere mid-game I found a +2 personal space class mod, with 5/3 that means up to +90% damage at point blank, that’s fantastic especially with Jakobs shotguns. Later, I got a 75% melee life steal artifact which completely refilled health on almost every melee strike. Cryo shotguns easily froze enemies for a x3 multiplier to her already vicious melee strikes.
It got harder in TVHM so I’ll need to adjust, but for the entirety of normal mode I had no rough time with Amara.
It really depends on if you get good drops or not. I did a melee build for leveling and it was a little slow 10-20, but I found a really nice bladed purple and suddenly things exploded if I looked at them up until lvl 40.
The important breakpoints for her I believe are the two melee 1-pointers if you go melee, obviously. The blue tree capstone is amazing. The red tree has The Eternal Fist, which also made leveling a breeze (can swap to Fist Over Matter vs bosses if you want).
If you are killing fine but dying too much, I think you need to dip into the green tree a bit. Oh, and Personal Space from the green tree is good for everyone except snipers. A really fantastic 1st-tier skill.
For me, she got good at level 25, when I found one of those Hyperion elemental grenade launcher shotguns, and she stayed good till the end.
Good gear always helps of course. But this is especially true if going down a tree which is not the brawl tree. If you want an easy time, Brawl is likely the best, since it provides massive survivability, and melee builds are some of the least gear dependent builds out there, other than the guaranteed drop with +110% melee damage. She also sucks vs bosses, but if you have crazy survivability, then just grab the highest DPS weapon you can find out there, ignore your build, and throw away all your bullets on burning them down.
For a while, I was using the OP Hyperion weapon vs literally everyone other than bosses, but while it would MELT everyone else, bosses were barely tickled by it. Based on the changes to Graveward, it’s easy to see why. 70% reduced chance, 30% reduced damage, and 30% reduced time means you’re doing (.3*.7*.7=.15) 15% of the damage you would be dealing normally. So I’d just grab random rocket launchers and double barrelled chainguns and other weapons which had nothing to do with anything related to my build and struggle through. With more survavability or a different build not reliant on elemental damage hopefully she fares better, but even now it’s not great.
I’m level 37 and have no problems with almost any enemy in the game. I’m using Elemental Amara build that’s posted with Phasegrasp. I use mostly elemental high fire rate SMG’s. If you played Borderlands 2 that’s the kind of Siren I’m using.
Great crowd control and just lay on the dot’s.
Yah i agree she’s weak compared to the others early game. At 15-20 she becomes decent and late game she’s great. For leveling on a team phasegrasp type abilities rule and probably slam for solo (and samsara).
I recommend the brawl tree for leveling, and then fist of the elements once you can fill out a tree and still be able to put some points in survivability (e.g. brawl tree). The blue tree is too glass cannon.
My only advice is spec for what you have, worry about specializing it when you are in a position to farm, There is no use trying to primarily melee your way all the way to max level when the gear needed to make it successful over other options is few and far between.
I would recommend focusing on skills that help you survive over most the damage options to start with and allow your guns to carry you through normal, Doing so will allow you more flexibility in item selection as your no longer locked into finding good elemental weapons while there are perfectly good items like Jacobs pistols and shotguns that will do just fine without the need to spec down the skill tree to improve output.
When I levelled Amara I went down as far as Find Your Centre and then moved across to grab Illuminated Fist. By level 19 you can have powerful, elemental punches, some nice survival skill and, when you combine all this with a life steal melee artifact, you will be very hard to kill. All I did for distance bosses was to switch Phaseslam for Phasecast and you’re golden.
I just started amara and hate her!! Her tree’s are mostly about speed and melee in a looter SHOOTER? I just can’t get on with her ( if there were melee weapons in game and she had more health she would make a little more sense) so deleting and going to do flakk instead.
Guess you didn’t look at the blue and red tree most of those are gun damage and elemental damage