Anarchy (Gaige)

Anarchy is one of the two first (and, to reach the next tier, mandatory) skills for Gaige in the Ordered Chaos skill tree. With it, Gaige improves her damage but lowers her accuracy each time she kills an opponent, or completely empties and reloads a magazine with her weapon.

Effects
Anarchy only has one skill point; with it, Gaige gains an Anarchy 'stack' whenever she kills an enemy, or fires every bullet from her weapon's magazine. Each Anarchy stack adds 1.75% to her Gun Damage, but lowers her Accuracy by 1.75% in exchange. Anarchy does not wear off by itself, and continues to add stacks with each subsequent kill or emptied magazine. Deathtrap kills do not grant Anarchy stacks. The skills Rational Anarchist and Typecast Iconoclast may cause more than one stack to be gained at once.

If Gaige reloads before the magazine is completely empty, she will either trigger Discord (if she has it) or else lose all of her Anarchy stacks. Gaige will also begin to lose Anarchy at a rate of roughly five stacks per second while Crippled, but getting a Second Wind will stop the loss of Anarchy stacks. Dying (in most cases), exiting the game or resetting skill points will remove all Anarchy stacks. Anarchy stacks are also consumed by Death From Above and With Claws.

Gaige's stacks 'max out' at 150, giving her a maximum potential benefit of +262.5% Gun Damage at a cost of -262.5% Accuracy. After fully investing in Preshrunk Cyberpunk, this limit can be extended to up to 400 stacks, increasing the benefit to up to +700% Gun Damage and -700% Accuracy. One step further is using the Slayer of Terramorphous Class Mod, allowing for up to 600 stacks or 1050% Gun Damage and -1050% Accuracy.

Strategy
To maximize the gain of Anarchy stacks from reloading, it is advisable to equip Gaige with weapons that have either high fire-rate, small magazines, or (preferably) both. Weapons which consume multiple ammo per shot such as Maliwan revolvers and multi-barreled shotguns are also useful.

With a high number of Anarchy stacks, accuracy will be close to non-existent. Even though the weapon crosshairs will 'max out' in size, the spread of the weapon can be far outside them. Depending on the number of stacks the player has, less-accurate weapons such as shotguns may become useless as they cannot reliably hit targets within the player's field of view. The most popular way to compensate for this is to invest in Gaige's Close Enough skill. Since ricocheting bullets from this skill are perfectly aimed at enemies, this vastly improves the effectiveness of weapons that otherwise cannot hit a target at point-blank range.

Weapons with splash damage, such as all those manufactured by Torgue and some by Maliwan, are also useful as even a shot at an enemy's feet can benefit from Anarchy's massive damage bonuses. However, Rocket Launchers are not recommended due to the huge potential for self damage (by shooting one's feet accidentally). Another weapon type worth mentioning is the E-Tech Dart pistol. Its homing and ricocheting rounds allow it to hit targets reliably regardless of its accuracy.

Conserving the use of Deathtrap is more important with many Anarchy stacks, as it can be used to distract distant enemies and allow the player more time to reach an effective range.

Since most players have a habit of reloading when the alert for low ammo appears, this may lead to losing all stacks of Anarchy accidentally. To counter this, bringing up the character menu or swapping weapons will interrupt the reload. Additionally, unequipping and reequipping a weapon via the Inventory screen will fill it with ammo.

Bugs

 * With a very large number of stacks (around 550 or more, which is only possible with the Slayer of Terramorphous Class Mod) and a low-accuracy weapon such as a shotgun, the weapon crosshair becomes extremely small. However, the player's accuracy does not improve; the massive spread may cause shots to land behind the player!
 * If Gaige falls off the map, she may or may not lose her stacks of Anarchy. If the camera switches to third person as one falls off the map, the stacks will be reset. Otherwise they will be retained.
 * Some weapons with a very long reload time (mostly Rocket Launchers) may not give stacks of Anarchy when reloaded, even when the last shot fired hit an enemy or destructible object.

Trivia

 * Gaige has a set of dialogue for when she gets a stack of Anarchy. Each stack gain has a chance to play a line, but it seems that it happens more often when gaining a stack from reloading. All of the known voice lines can be found here.
 * The more stacks Gaige has the more insane (and louder) she gets as evidenced by her dialogue, going from "Normal" to "Excited" to "God-complex". Some dialogue lines can only be heard with an extremely large number of stacks, obtained by points in Preshrunk Cyberpunk and a Slayer of Terramorphous Class Mod.