User:Ocinos/Gaige - Anarchy-Primer

= Unintended side effects =

Ordered Chaos... My first thought: Hmm. This 'gain stacks and hit less and less' looks rather scary. Let's avoid that.

But if you combine 'Close Enough' from B.F.F. with 'Smaller, Lighter, Faster' and 'Anarchy' fom O.C., then suddenly the cute little expelled schoolgirl changes into a power-hungry, god-complexing, game-breaking badass of awesomenessery. Evil. With a decent stack size (we're talking about 150-200 stacks) you can perform a wide array of lol-shots. An enemy hides behind a corner? No problem, shoot at the ground next to him and hit him anyway. A Nomad protected by his shield? Shoot behind him. At some point I shot right through a container. Must confess it was quite surprising when the corrosive dot started to proc and those nice green numbers appeared.

One-shotting a bad-ass marauder for 13K damage at level 15 is just... I don't know. Wrong? (214 stacks, Maliwan sniper rifle, headshot, slagged by Mordecai. Equipment was just some random loot.)

the good news
Barrels of fun while you jump in the enemy's face and mow them down. It's kinda ironic when the punk yells I never hit anything and you just killed 3 mobs at the same time.

the bad news
Don't die. Ever. Rebuilding the stacks is bad enough, but there's an ugly range between ~70-120 stacks where on the one hand you start to miss a lot and on the other don't do enough damage yet to either jump in the enemies face and riddle them with bullets or do the 'a miss is still a hit' indirect shooting.

Your worst nightmare: Surveyors and Buzzards. You need to shoot in the air (obviously) and therefore need to score direct hits because there are no walls to make bullets ricochet. (Yeah. Sure. Hit something with negative accuracy...)

Possible solutions:


 * call in Deathtrap and hide


 * lure Surveyor / Buzzard near walls


 * close distance and shoot at the ground beneath them

= General build considerations =

I won't give a detailed distribution list. Just a general overview about what makes the build work. The rest is up to you.

Best Friends Forever

 * 'Close Enough' - Essential. Negate Accuracy penalty.


 * 'Cooking up Trouble' - Nice to have. Negate Health damage from 'Blood Soaked Shields'


 * 'Upshot Robot' - Nice to have. Really great when fighting lots of enemies over a long time.


 * 'Unstoppable Force' - Nice to have. Close distance to enemies faster or run away and hide.

Little Big Trouble
No skills used so far. Leafless recommends Myelin, but I found 3/5 'Blood Soaked Shields' to be totally sufficient so far. Myelin might help make making Surveyors less of an annoyance.

Ordered Chaos

 * 'Smaller, Lighter, Faster' & 'Anarchy' - Essential. Can't progress further into the tree otherwise.


 * 'Preshrunk Cyberpunk' - Essential. 5/5 for maximum carnage (400 stacks)


 * 'Robot Rampage' - Nice to have. Makes Deathtrap swirl around and hit enemies a lot. Has some cooldown.


 * 'Blood Soaked Shields' - Essential. Negates slow-recharge of high capacity shields. 3/5 is enough.


 * 'Annoyed Android' - Nice to have. Makes Deathtrap a bit more deadlier. 2/5 is okay.


 * 'Typecast Iconoclast' - Essential. Regain lost stacks faster. Makes the climb to ~150 stacks less painful.


 * 'Death From Above' - SKIP IT. Seriously. Although it's nice in practice you'll soon get fed up with it[1].


 * 'The Nth Degree' - Nice to have. More damage. Elemental effects can proc on secondary targets!


 * 'With Claws' - Nice to have. Just one point. Might as well take it.

As you can see there a lot of free points to be spent. Do as you like.

= Equipment =

Weapons: Anything you feel comfortable with. Different sets of weapons for 'normal' and 'anarchy' mode strongly suggested. Launchers are of somewhat limited use if a shotgun has the potential to turn into a rapi-fire MIRV-launcher...

Shields: Give High-Capacity/Slow-Recharge shields a try. Kill enemies to recharge them. Investing 5 points in Blood Soaked Shields combined with a Nova shield may yield interesting results.

Class mods: Anything that improves Fire Rate, Gun Damage, Reload Speed in some way or another. Reload speed is of special interest since you will be swapping magazines a lot.

= Tactics =

Remap 'reload' to some unusual button if possible. You don't want to accidentally 'reload'. An Anarchy-Build is gamechanging in several ways. Making a reload a conscious choice (best to be avoided) is one of them.

While low on stacks: Sniper rifles, SMG / Assault rifles with scopes. Fight from a distance or close up and concentrate on hammering vulnerable spots.

Medium stacks: It depends. If things get really rough consider reloading to get rid of your stacks and return to 'normal' mode.

Maxed out stacks: Anything goes. (Explosive) Shotguns are great. SMG / Assault Rifles are great. Forget about Sniper Rifles. DO NOT DIE. One of the worst things that can happen is being killed by a lone EXP Loader. -_-;;

Low on Health? No Med-Pack in sight? Too scared to proceed with less then 1% health? Switch to a gun with a full magazine (or empty a magazine into the air/ground) and wait a bit. Or go out with a bang and Die/Second Wind/Revive. Just make sure to adhere to the correct order: first die, then kill.

= Death Trap =

Most of the time you don't need him at all. Use him as your panic button (be aware of the small 'cast time' until he appears) or to distract enemies so they expose themselves to you. Deathtrap can make short work of Surveyors and even whittle down Badass Buzzards. (Be prepared to call him several times. :( Still better then trying to hit an aerial target at 400 stacks.)

= Conclusion =

I hope to have spiked your interest. If anyone has a suggestion on stuff that I should try out - feel free to contact me and my Gaige. Btw. She's 45 now and although there have been hard times with a lot of dying I still enjoy playing her quite a lot. Level 24 to 34 was especially fun. Ramp up the stacks and go wild with the purple Torgue Shotgun. IN YOUR FACE! BAM! =)

P.S.: It's over nine thousand!

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[1] On the one hand every time you get bumped around (Skag, Stalker) it procs, reducing your hard gained stacks. On the other hand it procs for no reason from time to time. (E.g. while walking stairs.)