You are by far my favorite person for skill tree and gear guides. The videos are long but you point out many things that i wouldn't have noticed or cared about
Everyone appreciates the detail, but you do drone on. This video could easily be an hour long if you were more concise with your points. Regardless, I enjoy them and you easily give the best BL content on youtube.
Derch even though you do drone on you manage to keep it from getting boring. I've watched a few multiple times, and to be able to watch 2 hour long videos multiple times is amazing.
As a Krieg player, I could not resist playing Athena when the Pre-Sequel came out. She has elemental damage, a melee tree and can be nearly unkillable with her left tree. However after getting her to maxed level I realised they were not quite the same. But they they are still my favourite from both games :D
7 years later and these guides are still incredible, especially the detail in the actual mechanics and damage formulas. Not just "this skill does this", but why it does and how you can take advantage of that. Even learned a few tricks relating to BL2 from these, which I'm much more familiar with than TPS.
The Cryo weapons work really well with Melee Athena. You freeze melee enemy for 1 to 3 strike they'll be down pretty quickly while they are frozen. Even with Aspis up you'll still protect yourself from oncoming attacks. I just realized that freeze spec could go well with that Freeze Melee stuff.
Your channel is criminally under rated.....I like vinylic puma but these guides are 2nd to none that I've found.thanks you have really helped me understand the skill trees and in doing so has made me enjoy the game so much more. Thanks man !
I like these videos because, as a somewhat casual borderlands player, I get a new view on all of the skills in character trees. I used Athena my first time in the Pre-Sequel and I didn't go into many of the skills that you described as good. You got me back into this game and I'm experimenting more now too.
After going back and playing Claptrap in TPS and the siren and krieg in BL2 I have now played all the vault Hunter's of the past two games. After all those playthroughs I can pretty confidently say that Athena is my favorite character followed by Krieg. I guess I just love elemental skill trees
But can we all just step back from the really shitty things about the pre sequel and appreciate the absolutely incredible skill trees?! Even though I love borderlands 2 I find myself after playing the pre sequel under whelmed at the trees in 2, the action skills are cooler, the skills themselves are cooler, there aren't many bad skills at all that aren't worth time, every character is viable in mobbing and fighting eos, even whilhelm who is considered the axton of the game can kill him pretty well.
"But can we all just step back from the really shitty things about the pre sequel and appreciate the absolutely incredible skill trees?! " Fuck yes and some. The skill trees got so much better in this game, also the Class mods bl2 had a ton of shit coms and TPS had very few. TPS did a lot of things better, no relic in bl2 can compare to eddie.
Class mods actually felt like they made your characters unique in the pre sequel, not just the best ones boost basic damage skills (like how sal just uses a chaotic evil monk to money shot stuff). You got jacks which turns all guns into psudo hyperion guns, no com in 2 can come close to how awesome that is!
They did a much better COM skill point allocation for sure. Bl2 had so many bad coms or pointless ones. TPS seems like 90% of the coms are really solid and well thought out.
Thanks for this video, dude! I firmly believe that your channel will gain shit tons of traction upon the release of the next Borderlands game. Keep it up my man!
i love rewatching some of these deep dive videos - hell, i'm playing a new season of diablo and essentially watching this for entertainment honestly surprised he didn't use the boomacorn for the added elemental damage on shield demonstration - like two shots and that should be all the elements.
I’m not big on fire weapons in Pre Sequel only because enemies only set on fire when you are inside or in oxygen bubbles and a lot of the time you on the surface of the moon without oxygen to set enemies on fires. It’s great when ur inside or in a oxygen bubble.
Athena basically took gaiges anarchy and shock tree and added fire then combined them for ceraunic storm. And the legendary laser from claptraps dlc the thunderfire as a weapon made for her
It’s interesting that Athena’s skill tree features 2 skills that encourage a special playstyle: simultaneous bleeding enemies bonuses skills (fury of the arena ; bloodlust). Derch doesn’t like that playstyle, so his build and armaments won’t be honed to advantage it, so go for it. It may not be as powerful as certain builds/playstyles, especially since Ceraunic Storm skills can get out of control. But I like those 2 skills, because it’s a challenge to make the most of them. Personally, I’m gonna try and make them work, since the capstone Blood Rush probably is OP if it can begin bleeding multiple targets in quick succession.
yeah, i've got two athena builds, one a more soldier ish elementalist specialist, with weapons like the thunderfire and boomacorn to get elemental damage going great - maybe some in the middle tree for meucurial, but more heavily in the other two the second is more melee focused - quasar grenade to group foes and deal some shock damage, cryo weaponry and using the melee override to great effect, basically being able to freeze a foe, do two powerful melee overrides on them, see another for like 30 feet away, freeze, two melee overrides and kill that one, etc. or potentially tag the room, then start whittling them down one by one to have lots of bleeding foes for health regen and primed 'you've got red on you' chained explosions. hell, even with a cryo gun most of the time, shock grenades + epicenter + hades shackles can keep you in stacks if you need it and blood rush is THE best melee override in the series (not counting something like krieg's action skill), partially because it allows you to melee from range, as well as has a way to skip cooling down - if it only takes two melee attacks to kill the riffraff, you're good. you can just do melee overrides all day long, potentially freezing more elite foe before leaping in for the kill (literally)
@@leeman27534 I hear you, and I like her melee even better than Krieg too. Those are some delicious strats, clustering enemies with quasar so getting multiple bleeds is easier. It’s kind of a tricky playstyle to try and keep a bunch of enemies alive, but bleeding, simultaneously. Normally I’d go for picking them off. That might be why Derchlands wasn’t a fan. All in all, it’s the most fun I’ve had with a melee FPS, which are never quite as good as 3rd person. But zooming through the air is incredible. If you get a flying enemy, and high enough to trigger melee override, you can fly over small skyscrapers.
Thanks again for this video. Very informative. I always start to built my Athena with the left tree and then I spec heavy on elemental. I finish my built with some points with the middle tree. You and Admiral Bahroo are the best for Borderlands serie.
2 quick things. The bomber also boosts Aspis' damage (it was in the damage formula, but wasn't explicitly mentioned). And the O2 kit you forgot was the strafing run, which really helps with stacking, especially on bigger targets BTW, I think when Khim did his testing with the Hologram, he found it boosted elemental damage, not just DoTs. I'll try to find it. EDIT: According Khim and James, at the time they tested it, it only boosted straight elemental damage from all sources, not the DoTs. There doesn't seem to be a dedicated thread though.
Finally got around to playing the pre-sequel, loving Athena. Found a +3 Storm Weaving mod pretty early on, switching weapons almost feels like a second action skill :)
The one issue I have with Clear is that there have been a few times playing with my brother, usually during raid boss fights, where I throw my Aspis to get him up and it goes off and locks onto some other enemy, bounces around, and never gets him up. The game just doesn't allow it to lock onto friendlies like Maya's Res can, so if there are a lot of enemies around, Clear can completely miss your downed teammate. Otherwise, it's really fucking useful. I didn't notice until several levels after picking it up that it has the FFYL damage bonus, I'd grabbed it solely for rezzing my bro. Noticing that was like Christmas!
Some changes I’d like to see: add accuracy and recoil reduction to invictus Rend should allow thrown shield to also proc bleeding Smite should also trigger on melee Flash freeze should work like krieg- increase the time before stacks start to fall
They should have made her ceraunic (sorry about spelling) storm capstone should have given her a minimum malstrom stack count. Not a huge number, 50 at the absolute most but at least 10 so you always get smite, I think that plus another generic buff like DoT chance or something would have been really cool. Also vanguard is multiplicative based on who is receiving the healing which is weird but also cool because if you're not health stacking but your teammate is then they can still get above health gate in the same time. Also this can can lead to some hard to preform and arguably unnecessary glitches with wolf and giving him a stupid high health pool that if it was displayed would be something like 50k/100, the only time that is really helpful is on EOS because wolf loves to fly through his eye laser and get one shotted.
I think Maelstrom would be better with a much lower stack cap. It's just kinda OP and makes many other skills of her OP. A Storm build is so insanely broken it reminds me of Salvador.
Maybe it would be good if it only boosted the DOT damage instead of all elemental damage, I mean the fire rate and free ammo is more than good enough :)How I wish Gaige's Little Big Trouble was more like this tree instead of the clusterfuck it is... the pre-sequel was broken in terms of overpoweredness but the skill synergy was great!
After finding the Handsome Collection for dirt cheap (new at that too) I stumbled on this video and oh dear this clarified a bunch of stuff I had misunderstood back when the game launched. Holy crap, playing now post video is so different, really reinforces my feeling that this game's gameplay was more fun then Borderland 2 though I wasn't quite a fan of the presequel's story.... heck thematically I hate half the playable characters but oh my, which characters like Athena that doesn't even matter.
Yeah, Wrath of the Goddess and Zeus's Rage is an awesome combination, I use it on my Athena build, I just love the Kinetic Aspis, it's just the best defensive skill of all the vault hunters, it lasts a decent time, and it's got a quick reload, it's easy to clear mobs with it, and it's great for fighting the Sentinel in his first phase, not as useful against the second phase, but it provides passive regen with one of the skills, so it's still useful.
Like your other guides this one really helped me to come up with builds for Athena. My favorite one is relatively close to your deputy build, a mix between shooting and melee: you prime enemies with Blood Rush and shoot them with Tear's damage bonus. It's a very dynamic style, unfortunately it has almost become unplayable for me... for an unknown reason I sometimes get stuck in the Blood Rush animation, my char gets hold in place unable to move or look freely, and I can only shot forward. The only options when you are stuck is to either get killed (FFL makes you free to move again) or reload the game...
Athena imo is better designed than jack. Sure jack had a lot of synergy but it was all mainly "one shot everything so this synergy doesn't mean much". Athena took matching elements to a whole new level, with maelstrom, psudo infinite ammo, insane fire rate, close gaps for shotguns that stack maelstrom fastest, close quarters protection to work even better with shotties, and especially prepare for glory which I think is one of the best skills from a design stand point in borderlands history.
For me why Jack is still better is Athenas limits like shock and fire guns, action skill limiting your ability to ADS, so snipers, dahl, a lot of Jakobs are all out. She also had more bad skills like the bottom of her melee tree. She is still up there but enough IMO to make jack better.
I gotchya :) I just really like specialization. That's why axton is my favorite in bl2 because he is all about explosive weapons and idk, I just like that xD
Derchlands i disagree with Bloodlust being bad, it can be effective with the Xiphos capstone and Vangard, which you can have both Aspis up which is already giving health regain with Vangard, and with Bloodlust you regain amount of health back for each enemy that is bleeding. Plus you can back it up with Mealstorm stacks with Moxxi Laser weapon which will also heal you, and using a Cryo weapon like the fridgya and the Cryo Taser, you can freeze enemies and get the bloodlust effect going off. Theres also class mods that can increase either Vangard or Bloodlust and a bonus health regain mod as well.
@@naytny5819 I was always wondering what her melee skill tree synergies with and I realized it works with the cryo elements and it clicked in. That's what gun kata and bloodrush for. You spray people down with a cryo gun then dash to slash them with the extra damage. Cryo effect boosts melee damage but only Wilhelm and Athena have skills to get close to melee targets before they unfroze. And of the two Athena definitely has the better gap closer skill.
lol im an idiot i only ever watched the first section the skill trees i never realised that you showed your own build later on, gonna have to watch all your vids properly now
Melee works well with hybrid Maelstrom. I generally melee each enemy once to get bleed on them shoot the big guys. By the time the big ones are down bleed takes most trash mobs health down enough to finish with melee. It isn't the one shot Zer0 play style but is still quite effective and most importantly it's fun.
eh, i dunno about that - for one, all TPS allies have a melee override for no fucking reason. athena's is fine, athena's is great. but aurelia having an icy backhand, while fitting, isn't useful - and the explosive claptrap has a fire punch... why, again? also, the other games tend to do decently too, just, their skill trees are more about function rather than synergy, seemingly., whereas this one has very clear skill combos
6:24 I also remember something about being able to go past 999 stacks back then, but recently I have tried to exceed that and it didn't appear to work. Not with a legit setup and not with a modded weapon that shoots 500 projectiles at once either. Did they ever patch that out? Or maybe it was never possible and I remember incorrectly? I haven't found any clips of anyone achieving that either.
Gear wise you forgot Heartbreaker shotgun, if you can gib it in is pretty devastating for a fire weapon and very accurate, fast firing and fast reload weapon.
hell, for this vid, he should've used the boomacorn - a shotgun with explosive rounds that can apply all the elements in a few sots, would've been ideal for showing off those elemental stacking stuff - hell, i use one on athena essentially JUST for that.
Hard reboot (or hard shut down) is also just a general term for rebooting a computer by cutting power instead of using the restart or shut down function in the OS.
Started speccing into Ceraunic Storm Athena during my first playthrough of TPS. im only level 6 but I already have Ol Painful and a Purple rarity shock splitter. yeah... i think im set for the next ten levels or so.
its better to build her as elemental character. Meele character you need a a hadsome jack with you. You're the support. Its better to build 1st Creaunic Storm 2nd Phlanax. Only thing you get in Xiphos is Gun Kata and Clarity of purpose and if there are still skill points left put it in Mercurial
My Athena is currently lvl 35 and I’m having trouble staying alive while my AS is cooling down. How do you stay alive as an early level. When I play with friends it’s no issue because they take some agro but solo feels like a chore, any tips?
Can you recommend a good progression to getting these skills you mentioned? Mostly the “need” skills and in what order overall I should put attributes during progression.
kinda depends on you. do you want really good elemental stuff, with a large dmg boost? do you want to improve the aspis's functionality, and be able to tank better? do you want to play one of the two melee potentially focused characters as a melee character? personally, i go for some ceraunic storm, first: maelstrom's fantastic for getting a dmg boost, conduit makes you recharge shields if an enemy is shocked, smite is an interesting way to get some extra dmg in, or potentially inflict shock or burn regardless of weapon, and zeus's rage, for added elemental dmg to the aspis (and maybe elemental barrage, if you swap weapons a lot) then, i tend to go into phalanx: vanguard heals hp while you're holding the aspis up, and the hold the line lets you hold it for longer (taking little dmg, absorbing dmg, as well as healing with the other skill), prismatic aegis allows you to absorb elemental dmg as well (normally it just absorbs dmg in general, and caps out, with this, there's a physical cap, a fire cap, a shock cap, a corrosive cap, etc. plus, that elemental dmg is magnified by the maelstrom stacks, and a lot of foes use lasers this game, thus elemental dmg), united front helps restore shields too, wrath of the goddess bounces that stacked dmg to multiple foes, more foes hit with absorbed dmg, absorbed elements boosted, and zeus's rage (which gets lots of maelstrom stacks) then what you want in the melee tree.
I have a huge problem with Athena. I love all 3 of her skill trees. I love melee, but I also love to be overpowered (sometimes). I bounce back and forth all the time. I'm still working on building my first Athena so I haven't had a chance to start a second. Sticking with melee right now so I'm hard speced into Xiphos and Phalanx
I might be weird but Borderlands TPS is one of my favorite Borderlands game so far, I enjoyed tps moreso than Borderlands 2 and it’s really about a tie with Borderlands 3. I haven’t played. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands yet
@@Derchlands I just loved being able to float in space and all of the airborne elements so much, including the jump pads those were awesome, it was great fun shooting out the glass helmets of enemies on the moons, plus I thought the missions were solid and I laughed quite a bit
Man, I just wished Gaige's Little big trouble tree was more like Athena's Ceuranic Storm tree.Not as overpowered of course, maybe only boost the electrocute damage instead of the gun damage and pull rounds off your reserve instead of just giving them for free but it would have been awesome! Instead you got a tree that rewards single shots and crits on a character designed for full auto and charging in. The pre-sequel was pretty broken in terms of power but the trees had great synergy
With the Dragon class mod, I'm tempted to use that one in a blue just for +5 Omega Senshu and +6 Gathering Tempest as a general com for mobbing and normal play. Even if the burn damage is garbage, those are two of my favorite Athena skills. They're always on and work well in almost any build, plus Smite still benefits from burn damage. Athena is cool. She's like a mix of Sal and Maya.
Just a note on Conduit, it recharges for only 2 seconds. Here's the thread on what I'm talking about: forums.gearboxsoftware.com/t/you-like-conduit-amp-shields-right-then-keep-this-in-mind/206748
Glad your back doin borderland vids instead of that sorry ass game battle born. Sorry but it flopped like most people said it would. It's just a horde mode same load shit game. Gets old after 3 hours.
Taylor Made no of course not. It was never meant to compete with borderlands, and is something new from gearbox. I really do want to get back into it but have no motivation to at the moment. Maybe after the dlc hits.
I love battleborn and im not done with it im just doing borderlands and battleborn. It doesn't even have a horde mode, please if you are going to come here and shit on the game and least know something about it.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
You are by far my favorite person for skill tree and gear guides. The videos are long but you point out many things that i wouldn't have noticed or cared about
Yeah a few complained about the length but I would rather make them long than skip a bunch, these are deep detailed games
Everyone appreciates the detail, but you do drone on. This video could easily be an hour long if you were more concise with your points. Regardless, I enjoy them and you easily give the best BL content on youtube.
Derch even though you do drone on you manage to keep it from getting boring. I've watched a few multiple times, and to be able to watch 2 hour long videos multiple times is amazing.
As a Krieg player, I could not resist playing Athena when the Pre-Sequel came out. She has elemental damage, a melee tree and can be nearly unkillable with her left tree. However after getting her to maxed level I realised they were not quite the same. But they they are still my favourite from both games :D
7 years later and these guides are still incredible, especially the detail in the actual mechanics and damage formulas. Not just "this skill does this", but why it does and how you can take advantage of that. Even learned a few tricks relating to BL2 from these, which I'm much more familiar with than TPS.
The Cryo weapons work really well with Melee Athena. You freeze melee enemy for 1 to 3 strike they'll be down pretty quickly while they are frozen. Even with Aspis up you'll still protect yourself from oncoming attacks. I just realized that freeze spec could go well with that Freeze Melee stuff.
Your channel is criminally under rated.....I like vinylic puma but these guides are 2nd to none that I've found.thanks you have really helped me understand the skill trees and in doing so has made me enjoy the game so much more. Thanks man !
I like these videos because, as a somewhat casual borderlands player, I get a new view on all of the skills in character trees. I used Athena my first time in the Pre-Sequel and I didn't go into many of the skills that you described as good. You got me back into this game and I'm experimenting more now too.
Glad to hear it, she has so many good skills I often struggle to choose
SquaredDisc252 dude you watched an hour and a half detailed vid about the game. you're not casual.
After going back and playing Claptrap in TPS and the siren and krieg in BL2 I have now played all the vault Hunter's of the past two games. After all those playthroughs I can pretty confidently say that Athena is my favorite character followed by Krieg. I guess I just love elemental skill trees
you like aurelia with cryo or maya with slag
Never played TPS, but the blades on the Aspis remind me of those Atlas assassins that Athena used to be a part of
But can we all just step back from the really shitty things about the pre sequel and appreciate the absolutely incredible skill trees?! Even though I love borderlands 2 I find myself after playing the pre sequel under whelmed at the trees in 2, the action skills are cooler, the skills themselves are cooler, there aren't many bad skills at all that aren't worth time, every character is viable in mobbing and fighting eos, even whilhelm who is considered the axton of the game can kill him pretty well.
"But can we all just step back from the really shitty things about the pre sequel and appreciate the absolutely incredible skill trees?! " Fuck yes and some. The skill trees got so much better in this game, also the Class mods bl2 had a ton of shit coms and TPS had very few. TPS did a lot of things better, no relic in bl2 can compare to eddie.
Class mods actually felt like they made your characters unique in the pre sequel, not just the best ones boost basic damage skills (like how sal just uses a chaotic evil monk to money shot stuff). You got jacks which turns all guns into psudo hyperion guns, no com in 2 can come close to how awesome that is!
true & this is something that needs to be kept and if possible improved upon going forward! I hope they don't regress for their next game...
They did a much better COM skill point allocation for sure. Bl2 had so many bad coms or pointless ones. TPS seems like 90% of the coms are really solid and well thought out.
True, game feel smoother and lot less tortured!
Xiphos is pronounced ksifos and means sword in greek.
Aspis also means shield in greek
Thanks for this video, dude!
I firmly believe that your channel will gain shit tons of traction upon the release of the next Borderlands game. Keep it up my man!
Gary Burgin Jr well he is getting there
Sadly he's stopped for over a year now 😞
i love rewatching some of these deep dive videos - hell, i'm playing a new season of diablo and essentially watching this for entertainment
honestly surprised he didn't use the boomacorn for the added elemental damage on shield demonstration - like two shots and that should be all the elements.
Leeman27534 I LOVE THE BOOMACORN!!!!
Yeah I remember everyone shitting on prismatic aegis. But I loved running around and punching cryo barrels for cc :3
I’m not big on fire weapons in Pre Sequel only because enemies only set on fire when you are inside or in oxygen bubbles and a lot of the time you on the surface of the moon without oxygen to set enemies on fires. It’s great when ur inside or in a oxygen bubble.
yeah, same.
luckily she's more of a shock oriented character anyway.
and her arguably best weapon, the thunderfire, doesn't force you to choose.
Athena basically took gaiges anarchy and shock tree and added fire then combined them for ceraunic storm. And the legendary laser from claptraps dlc the thunderfire as a weapon made for her
knight mare indeed. She is what Gaige should have been. Its agitating.
An hour long video thanks for giving me something to watch
It’s interesting that Athena’s skill tree features 2 skills that encourage a special playstyle: simultaneous bleeding enemies bonuses skills (fury of the arena ; bloodlust). Derch doesn’t like that playstyle, so his build and armaments won’t be honed to advantage it, so go for it. It may not be as powerful as certain builds/playstyles, especially since Ceraunic Storm skills can get out of control. But I like those 2 skills, because it’s a challenge to make the most of them. Personally, I’m gonna try and make them work, since the capstone Blood Rush probably is OP if it can begin bleeding multiple targets in quick succession.
yeah, i've got two athena builds, one a more soldier ish elementalist specialist, with weapons like the thunderfire and boomacorn to get elemental damage going great - maybe some in the middle tree for meucurial, but more heavily in the other two
the second is more melee focused - quasar grenade to group foes and deal some shock damage, cryo weaponry and using the melee override to great effect, basically being able to freeze a foe, do two powerful melee overrides on them, see another for like 30 feet away, freeze, two melee overrides and kill that one, etc. or potentially tag the room, then start whittling them down one by one to have lots of bleeding foes for health regen and primed 'you've got red on you' chained explosions.
hell, even with a cryo gun most of the time, shock grenades + epicenter + hades shackles can keep you in stacks if you need it
and blood rush is THE best melee override in the series (not counting something like krieg's action skill), partially because it allows you to melee from range, as well as has a way to skip cooling down - if it only takes two melee attacks to kill the riffraff, you're good. you can just do melee overrides all day long, potentially freezing more elite foe before leaping in for the kill (literally)
@@leeman27534 I hear you, and I like her melee even better than Krieg too. Those are some delicious strats, clustering enemies with quasar so getting multiple bleeds is easier.
It’s kind of a tricky playstyle to try and keep a bunch of enemies alive, but bleeding, simultaneously. Normally I’d go for picking them off. That might be why Derchlands wasn’t a fan.
All in all, it’s the most fun I’ve had with a melee FPS, which are never quite as good as 3rd person. But zooming through the air is incredible. If you get a flying enemy, and high enough to trigger melee override, you can fly over small skyscrapers.
Just started playing, this is an amazing guide, thank you!
I just started in 2021. And its way better than I heard
Thanks again for this video. Very informative. I always start to built my Athena with the left tree and then I spec heavy on elemental. I finish my built with some points with the middle tree. You and Admiral Bahroo are the best for Borderlands serie.
2 quick things. The bomber also boosts Aspis' damage (it was in the damage formula, but wasn't explicitly mentioned). And the O2 kit you forgot was the strafing run, which really helps with stacking, especially on bigger targets
BTW, I think when Khim did his testing with the Hologram, he found it boosted elemental damage, not just DoTs. I'll try to find it.
EDIT: According Khim and James, at the time they tested it, it only boosted straight elemental damage from all sources, not the DoTs. There doesn't seem to be a dedicated thread though.
Very cool, thanks for the heads up on that
Finally got around to playing the pre-sequel, loving Athena. Found a +3 Storm Weaving mod pretty early on, switching weapons almost feels like a second action skill :)
The one issue I have with Clear is that there have been a few times playing with my brother, usually during raid boss fights, where I throw my Aspis to get him up and it goes off and locks onto some other enemy, bounces around, and never gets him up. The game just doesn't allow it to lock onto friendlies like Maya's Res can, so if there are a lot of enemies around, Clear can completely miss your downed teammate. Otherwise, it's really fucking useful. I didn't notice until several levels after picking it up that it has the FFYL damage bonus, I'd grabbed it solely for rezzing my bro. Noticing that was like Christmas!
I'd argue about Krieg, but I totally agree on everything else. Probably, because psycho has that distinct playstyle with self-ignition and stuff.
Some changes I’d like to see:
add accuracy and recoil reduction to invictus
Rend should allow thrown shield to also proc bleeding
Smite should also trigger on melee
Flash freeze should work like krieg- increase the time before stacks start to fall
I just reached lvl 25 with Wilhelm but now I wanna go back to my lvl 41 Athena lol. THEY ARE ALL SO FUN!
"I wanna play Timmy, but Athena, wait no Wilhelm, Nisha is good, freaking Claptrap tho AHH MY BRAIN!"
@@krumplekookie9181 Also Aurelia is godlike.
They should have made her ceraunic (sorry about spelling) storm capstone should have given her a minimum malstrom stack count. Not a huge number, 50 at the absolute most but at least 10 so you always get smite, I think that plus another generic buff like DoT chance or something would have been really cool. Also vanguard is multiplicative based on who is receiving the healing which is weird but also cool because if you're not health stacking but your teammate is then they can still get above health gate in the same time. Also this can can lead to some hard to preform and arguably unnecessary glitches with wolf and giving him a stupid high health pool that if it was displayed would be something like 50k/100, the only time that is really helpful is on EOS because wolf loves to fly through his eye laser and get one shotted.
awesome video can't wait for you to do one for claptrap and Wilhelm
I loveee Athena she feels so nice with the sheild for tanking dmg
Looking back at these and loving it . And hoping you wil do the same with the bl3 characters
Over a year and nothing from him. Hope he does though
I think Maelstrom would be better with a much lower stack cap. It's just kinda OP and makes many other skills of her OP. A Storm build is so insanely broken it reminds me of Salvador.
But it takes time to be op with maelstrom because the amount of time that it takes to throw grenades and shit like that.
Maybe it would be good if it only boosted the DOT damage instead of all elemental damage, I mean the fire rate and free ammo is more than good enough :)How I wish Gaige's Little Big Trouble was more like this tree instead of the clusterfuck it is... the pre-sequel was broken in terms of overpoweredness but the skill synergy was great!
Every body shuld not be shit as axton but im on your side its op
@@jek2142 axton is not shit
After finding the Handsome Collection for dirt cheap (new at that too) I stumbled on this video and oh dear this clarified a bunch of stuff I had misunderstood back when the game launched. Holy crap, playing now post video is so different, really reinforces my feeling that this game's gameplay was more fun then Borderland 2 though I wasn't quite a fan of the presequel's story.... heck thematically I hate half the playable characters but oh my, which characters like Athena that doesn't even matter.
I got the handsome collection for 18 dollars. Worth every penny
Yeah, Wrath of the Goddess and Zeus's Rage is an awesome combination, I use it on my Athena build, I just love the Kinetic Aspis, it's just the best defensive skill of all the vault hunters, it lasts a decent time, and it's got a quick reload, it's easy to clear mobs with it, and it's great for fighting the Sentinel in his first phase, not as useful against the second phase, but it provides passive regen with one of the skills, so it's still useful.
Loved Athena
*talks about how cool Athena is
*throws aspis at wall multiple times
Like your other guides this one really helped me to come up with builds for Athena. My favorite one is relatively close to your deputy build, a mix between shooting and melee: you prime enemies with Blood Rush and shoot them with Tear's damage bonus. It's a very dynamic style, unfortunately it has almost become unplayable for me... for an unknown reason I sometimes get stuck in the Blood Rush animation, my char gets hold in place unable to move or look freely, and I can only shot forward. The only options when you are stuck is to either get killed (FFL makes you free to move again) or reload the game...
Athena imo is better designed than jack. Sure jack had a lot of synergy but it was all mainly "one shot everything so this synergy doesn't mean much". Athena took matching elements to a whole new level, with maelstrom, psudo infinite ammo, insane fire rate, close gaps for shotguns that stack maelstrom fastest, close quarters protection to work even better with shotties, and especially prepare for glory which I think is one of the best skills from a design stand point in borderlands history.
For me why Jack is still better is Athenas limits like shock and fire guns, action skill limiting your ability to ADS, so snipers, dahl, a lot of Jakobs are all out. She also had more bad skills like the bottom of her melee tree. She is still up there but enough IMO to make jack better.
I gotchya :) I just really like specialization. That's why axton is my favorite in bl2 because he is all about explosive weapons and idk, I just like that xD
Derchlands i disagree with Bloodlust being bad, it can be effective with the Xiphos capstone and Vangard, which you can have both Aspis up which is already giving health regain with Vangard, and with Bloodlust you regain amount of health back for each enemy that is bleeding. Plus you can back it up with Mealstorm stacks with Moxxi Laser weapon which will also heal you, and using a Cryo weapon like the fridgya and the Cryo Taser, you can freeze enemies and get the bloodlust effect going off. Theres also class mods that can increase either Vangard or Bloodlust and a bonus health regain mod as well.
She also has a kickass melee build as a back up, her melee override is easily the best of the series.
@@naytny5819 I was always wondering what her melee skill tree synergies with and I realized it works with the cryo elements and it clicked in. That's what gun kata and bloodrush for. You spray people down with a cryo gun then dash to slash them with the extra damage. Cryo effect boosts melee damage but only Wilhelm and Athena have skills to get close to melee targets before they unfroze. And of the two Athena definitely has the better gap closer skill.
lol im an idiot i only ever watched the first section the skill trees i never realised that you showed your own build later on, gonna have to watch all your vids properly now
Melee works well with hybrid Maelstrom. I generally melee each enemy once to get bleed on them shoot the big guys. By the time the big ones are down bleed takes most trash mobs health down enough to finish with melee. It isn't the one shot Zer0 play style but is still quite effective and most importantly it's fun.
It's almost like the designer's actually took the time to REALLY design TPS skill trees in an intelligent way, unlike other BL games.
eh, i dunno about that - for one, all TPS allies have a melee override for no fucking reason.
athena's is fine, athena's is great. but aurelia having an icy backhand, while fitting, isn't useful - and the explosive claptrap has a fire punch... why, again?
also, the other games tend to do decently too, just, their skill trees are more about function rather than synergy, seemingly., whereas this one has very clear skill combos
Just started playing and tps is very underrated
@@saltycomet Indeed.
@@leeman27534 Yea I do agree that some things are useless but in terms of interactions with their skill trees I think it was well designed.
6:24 I also remember something about being able to go past 999 stacks back then, but recently I have tried to exceed that and it didn't appear to work. Not with a legit setup and not with a modded weapon that shoots 500 projectiles at once either. Did they ever patch that out? Or maybe it was never possible and I remember incorrectly? I haven't found any clips of anyone achieving that either.
I think it was supposed to be capped but I recall seeing short jumps over it but maybe they were lag or bugs
Gear wise you forgot Heartbreaker shotgun, if you can gib it in is pretty devastating for a fire weapon and very accurate, fast firing and fast reload weapon.
The Heart Breaker doesn't exist in TPS, far as I know.
hell, for this vid, he should've used the boomacorn - a shotgun with explosive rounds that can apply all the elements in a few sots, would've been ideal for showing off those elemental stacking stuff - hell, i use one on athena essentially JUST for that.
the hard reboot and thunderfire are amazing on Athena
hard reboot? lol, hard reset reference :D
Hard reboot (or hard shut down) is also just a general term for rebooting a computer by cutting power instead of using the restart or shut down function in the OS.
You can ads btw, I think you have to swap weapons and then you can ads. Or its ads when you activate her sheild.
Started speccing into Ceraunic Storm Athena during my first playthrough of TPS. im only level 6 but I already have Ol Painful and a Purple rarity shock splitter. yeah... i think im set for the next ten levels or so.
thanks for all the info it's help me a lot and good video 😲
if the capstone of the ceraunic storm was to add elemental damege to the melee atacks much like backdraft the melee would have been avesome
So I'm guessing this is going to be for all the characters.
Hello friend, Nice gameplay
Watching here, Have a nice day
is it viable to build her using phalanx and xiphos or does she really rely on ceranic storm for end game dmg
its better to build her as elemental character. Meele character you need a a hadsome jack with you. You're the support. Its better to build 1st Creaunic Storm 2nd Phlanax. Only thing you get in Xiphos is Gun Kata and Clarity of purpose and if there are still skill points left put it in Mercurial
Could she work with the boomacorn late game?
How did you get the Luneshine on the Hail? Is that available from the grinder or moonstone chests?
Gibbed. Can't come with Luneshine unfortunately.
i just started a new athena any tips or reccomendations
Hey Derch, do you mind putting up the save file somewhere? Would be greatly appreciated. :D
23:48 Stack City, USA
Athena is the best. Blood Rush is probably my favorite skill ever. so fun to zip around cutting people.
Melee Athena can one shot most enemies in the game at UVHM, I think it is very strong for mobbing.
My Athena is currently lvl 35 and I’m having trouble staying alive while my AS is cooling down. How do you stay alive as an early level. When I play with friends it’s no issue because they take some agro but solo feels like a chore, any tips?
thanks dude
Im starting blps again through the handsome collection wilhelm was extremely boring and founf myself stuck between athena and aurelia..tips?
Where did you find those damages equations ?
I'm here again to ask you just one question: is Athena broken or YES? And of course, to thank you for dat awesome video and many others.
+Михаил Аблогин I think she's well designed, not broken
Luneshined hail? Gibbed or can that come from the grinder? If it can that'd give me a reason to get back to the grinder
not 100% sure to be honest
Can you recommend a good progression to getting these skills you mentioned? Mostly the “need” skills and in what order overall I should put attributes during progression.
kinda depends on you.
do you want really good elemental stuff, with a large dmg boost?
do you want to improve the aspis's functionality, and be able to tank better?
do you want to play one of the two melee potentially focused characters as a melee character?
personally, i go for some ceraunic storm, first: maelstrom's fantastic for getting a dmg boost, conduit makes you recharge shields if an enemy is shocked, smite is an interesting way to get some extra dmg in, or potentially inflict shock or burn regardless of weapon, and zeus's rage, for added elemental dmg to the aspis (and maybe elemental barrage, if you swap weapons a lot)
then, i tend to go into phalanx: vanguard heals hp while you're holding the aspis up, and the hold the line lets you hold it for longer (taking little dmg, absorbing dmg, as well as healing with the other skill), prismatic aegis allows you to absorb elemental dmg as well (normally it just absorbs dmg in general, and caps out, with this, there's a physical cap, a fire cap, a shock cap, a corrosive cap, etc. plus, that elemental dmg is magnified by the maelstrom stacks, and a lot of foes use lasers this game, thus elemental dmg), united front helps restore shields too, wrath of the goddess bounces that stacked dmg to multiple foes, more foes hit with absorbed dmg, absorbed elements boosted, and zeus's rage (which gets lots of maelstrom stacks)
then what you want in the melee tree.
Who will be your next guide be for, Derch?
Aurelia
+Derch Awesome! I fucking love Aurelia, done two playthroughs with her. Seriously awesome character.
I have a huge problem with Athena. I love all 3 of her skill trees. I love melee, but I also love to be overpowered (sometimes). I bounce back and forth all the time. I'm still working on building my first Athena so I haven't had a chance to start a second. Sticking with melee right now so I'm hard speced into Xiphos and Phalanx
Hey you changed your profile picture
Where is this room. I don't remember it from the game.
DLC. Think deck 13
Just a question is it possible to have 2 trees with their final skill activated?
I think is a yes
Also is called capstone skill btw
isn't burn dots. incindary is all fire?
Bruh that nukem reload speed is way too fast, did you modify it in willow tree? (Sorry if that was the wrong thing I play on console)
try facing away from the enemy while using wrath of the goddess it will dead angle them and hit through their sheild!
My Magic barreier laughs at your damage
My unlocked murakumo laughs at your reverse roll backstab attempts.
Jacob Saur My Chaos blade laughs at Your UGS
Thunderfire laser...
I might be weird but Borderlands TPS is one of my favorite Borderlands game so far, I enjoyed tps moreso than Borderlands 2 and it’s really about a tie with Borderlands 3. I haven’t played. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands yet
TPS was great
@@Derchlands I just loved being able to float in space and all of the airborne elements so much, including the jump pads those were awesome, it was great fun shooting out the glass helmets of enemies on the moons, plus I thought the missions were solid and I laughed quite a bit
Man, I just wished Gaige's Little big trouble tree was more like Athena's Ceuranic Storm tree.Not as overpowered of course, maybe only boost the electrocute damage instead of the gun damage and pull rounds off your reserve instead of just giving them for free but it would have been awesome! Instead you got a tree that rewards single shots and crits on a character designed for full auto and charging in. The pre-sequel was pretty broken in terms of power but the trees had great synergy
Yeah I think if they kept bl2 scaling and had op levels it would of been much more fun
I really wish this game had OP levels, a true digi peak and about twice as many bosses (more flesh bosses and fewer shields.)
is the thumbnail from tales?
+Matthew Wu yes
So, who's next?
maelstorm + bomber oz kit (or dualty) + wrath of the goddess = 4 enemies overkilled
In my opinion Athena is like a mix of Sal and Gaige
I’d throw Zer0 into that mix as well.
I'm upset because on my level 13 Athena I have yet to run into a single elemental shotgun. Not one.
I personaly speced first into Phalanx. And well i used any elemental wep i could get
Hey Derch, will you be uploading this save anywhere?
With the Dragon class mod, I'm tempted to use that one in a blue just for +5 Omega Senshu and +6 Gathering Tempest as a general com for mobbing and normal play. Even if the burn damage is garbage, those are two of my favorite Athena skills. They're always on and work well in almost any build, plus Smite still benefits from burn damage.
Athena is cool. She's like a mix of Sal and Maya.
Just a note on Conduit, it recharges for only 2 seconds. Here's the thread on what I'm talking about: forums.gearboxsoftware.com/t/you-like-conduit-amp-shields-right-then-keep-this-in-mind/206748
Lucas Jo Brooke That explains why it kept stopping then, thanks for clearing that up
I can't play tps for over three hours, I get so bored I just can't
Play for 2 hours and 99 minutes
+Trajforce more like 12 minutes
Or 2 hours and 59 mins
+Trajforce 1 hour is 60 minutes
+Derch fair point, but I don't time that and I'm probably never going to
Anyone have time stamps for the beginning of skill trees, each class mod, and the gear overview?
I though you are playing on console because of the Xbox button prompts...
Athena is what Gaige SHOULD have been. I'd love to play as her on Pandora in Borderlands 2. She would wreck!
You somewhat sound like Mark Crilley.
Tear is pronounced like air. Aside from that thanks 🙂
Edit: ah you finally realised 😜
Glad your back doin borderland vids instead of that sorry ass game battle born. Sorry but it flopped like most people said it would. It's just a horde mode same load shit game. Gets old after 3 hours.
yea i got bored with it quick. It is a great game though and alot of fun. But something that ill go back to once in awhile.
+pryt86 yea that's kinda how I feel. never could compete with any borderlands though!!
Taylor Made no of course not. It was never meant to compete with borderlands, and is something new from gearbox. I really do want to get back into it but have no motivation to at the moment. Maybe after the dlc hits.
I love battleborn and im not done with it im just doing borderlands and battleborn. It doesn't even have a horde mode, please if you are going to come here and shit on the game and least know something about it.