- This article is about the Anarchy skill in Borderlands 2. For other uses, see Anarchy.
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 the magazine of her gun.
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 gain Anarchy stacks.
If Gaige reloads before the magazine is completely empty however, 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.
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 Terramorpheus class mod, allowing for up to 600 stacks or 1050% Gun Damage and -1050% Accuracy.
Strategy
It is generally advisable to equip Gaige with weapons that have either high fire-rate, small magazines, or (preferably) both. At maximum Anarchy stacks, accuracy will be close to non-existent, so a player can effectively ignore Accuracy when considering weapons for an Anarchy-Built Mechromancer.
Conserving the use of Deathtrap is more important with many Anarcy stacks, as it can be used to distract distant enemies and allow the player more time to reach an effective range.
It will be necessary to get as close to the enemy as one can, whenever possible. As there is an 'upper cap' of inaccuracy a weapon can achieve, inherently inaccurate weapons such as Shotguns and SMGs are less affected by Anarchy's detrimental effects, and can be preferable to Pistols or Rifles.
Even with a high number of Anarchy stacks, one can be effective at medium range, or farther, if they possess an E-Tech pistol with homing rounds. If the reticle is aimed at an enemy the round will seek out the target reliably and even "missed" shots can find a target mid-flight. However, the projectile velocity and explosion delay will limit the ability to remove a distant threat immediately.
Grabbing a decently leveled sniper rifle and "quickscoping" helps counteract the inaccuracy for a short time after scoping in. Be sure to shoot as soon as your scope comes up or Anarchy will take over and your shots will have almost no chance of connecting.
Since most players have a habit of pressing the reload button when the alert for low ammo appears, this may lead to losing all stacks of anarchy accidently. To counter this, bringing up the character menu will cancel the reload before the stacks dissapear. Also, taking a gun with low ammo in the clip out of the weapon slot and replacing it will fill it with bullets, preventing any chance of accidentally losing all Anarchy stacks.
Tediore weapons are very effective with Anarchy, as they will reload very quickly and will often run out of ammo quickly as well. They also have somewhat high accuracy and can be used up to medium range even with high stacks of Anarchy.
Notes
- Prematurely reloading a Tediore firearm does not count as emptying a magazine, even though the ammo is expended in the process.
- The Discord skill can be a useful fallback, allowing a shot to be fired and then reload to stop the Anarchy loss.
- In Co-Op, having a Gunzerker with an Ammo-Regenerating Class Mod is an asset, as Anarchy tends towards eating through ammunition.
- The depreciation of accuracy may warrant some investment in Close Enough.
- Anarchy stacks can be gained by reloading the weapon while attacking the Target Practice found in Marcus munitions gun range.
- Hyperion weapons will still gain increasing accuracy when fired, making this brand's SMGs and Shotguns viable options, especially with points in Close Enough. However, the SMGs may "bounce" wildly when starting to fire, moving the the screen around. This effect isn't noticeable at lower stack counts, but around the 150 mark the effect is noticeable.
- An interesting bug occurs, if you use a gun with very low accuracy (around 30) and the stacks reach a very high amount (from around 550 stacks onwards, which is only possible with the Slayer of Terramorphous-Class Mod). The Crosshair will look like the gun is extremely accurate (shotguns will show a perfect circle), but actually the bullets fired will follow no logic anymore, being fired in extreme angles (They can even fly behind you without ricocheting).
Trivia
- Gaige has a set of dialogue for when she gets a stack of Anarchy. Each stack gain has a chance to proc it, but it seems that it happens more often when reloading on an empty clip. Most, but not all, of the quotes fall into one or more of three categories: stack count related, damage related, and accuracy related.
- 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". The shift points are roughly at 100 and 150.
| Gaige skills | ||
|---|---|---|
| Deathtrap | ||
| Best Friends Forever | Little Big Trouble | Ordered Chaos |