Bruisers are large, hulking and very muscular bandits. The regular bruisers are bare-chested, wearing surgical-style masks, goggles and have a mohawk hairdo. Badass Bruisers wear full face masks.
Overview
Bruisers number among the many former convicts brought to Pandora as cheap labour. Casting off their shackles along with the other bandits, they quickly joined in with the pillaging of Pandora's civilian population. Bruisers bear traits of both the regular bandits and the Psychos, being both sane enough to use guns effectively, yet also being physically enhanced like the larger psychos. Their size may be the result of exposure to the same source that mutated the psychos. It can also be noted they are similar in stature to Brick.
Tactics
Bruisers are the slow, heavy weapon specialists of the bandits. They move at a walking speed with no regard for their own safety, preferring to rely solely on their own physical resilience rather than seek cover when under fire. This makes them relatively easy to fight in a tactical sense in that they can be avoided and have their line of sight blocked, but also present a protracted engagement due to their high health. They rarely carry shields, so Incendiary weapons are very effective on them as a result.
Their armaments are usually SMGs and Combat Rifles. They will use these weapons as part of their primary attack strategy. If a Bruiser is approached to melee range he will switch to a secondary attack, lashing out with his enormous left fist.
It is often preferable to run in close and score critical hits with high powered close range attacks. Although attackers may sustain some damage, a bruiser can be eliminated quickly with this method.
Also, if you encounter a Bruiser at close range, it can be effective to use melee attacks as they will have to recover briefly, and so a string of melee attacks will render them unable to attack. This is best used when there are no other enemies in the area.
Regular Bruisers also use elemental weapons, which can be deadly at higher levels. It is rare to see them use rocket launcher weapons.
Badass Bruiser
A Badass Bruiser is a very large armored Bruiser that rarely equips a shield mod. In the second Playthrough, they are replaced by BadMutha Brutes, which are in turn replaced by SuperBad Bullies after completing the second Playthrough. They can be easily recognised as a Badass due to their signature glowing eyes, larger goggles, and significantly larger size than normal Bruisers. Their weapons are more powerful than regular Bruisers and they can often be found firing Rocket Launchers. Most of the time they will use machine guns.
Badass Bruiser
Bruiser Bosses
- Franz - Partner of Hanz and bodyguard to Baron Flynt.
Notes
- On Playthrough 2, Bruisers are called Brutes; on Playthrough 2.5, they are called Bullies.
- On Playthrough 2 (and 2.5) Bruisers tend to spawn a little more than regular Bandits making a small group of them extremely dangerous.
- If you use a weapon like 1 Thunder Storm and the electricity kills a regular Bruiser, it should show like blood or that, but it just shows more skin flesh unusally.
- Most Bruisers drop their weapons when killed, varying from machine guns to elemental rocket launchers.