Mania

Mania is the second of Krieg's three skill trees. The Mania tree revolves around high-risk, high-reward tactics, melee combat and health mechanics. His other skill trees are Bloodlust and Hellborn.

In the words of the Creative Director for Borderlands 2 "Krieg's Mania tree makes use of mechanics in the game that may seem counterintuitive at first. Some of the skills require things that have always seemed like a bad thing until now, such as Fuel the Rampage, where taking health damage increases your cooldown rate faster allowing you to access Buzz Axe Rampage faster, which means you can fully recharge your health, and skills like Empty the Rage and Embrace the Pain that increase your melee and fire rate respectively while your shield is down. ^{[Reference needed]}

Skills

Mania Skill Tree

Tier 1

• Empty the Rage - Increases melee damage; further increases melee damage when shield is depleted or magazine is empty,
• Pull the Pin - Drop a free grenade upon death. Kills with this grenade are worth double experience, and are announced by a popup once Krieg has respawned.
• Feed the Meat - Increases max health and shield recharge delay.

Tier 2

• Fuel the Rampage - Decreases action skill cooldown time when taking damage; adds a further boost when taking damage to health. Enables friendly fire from teammates. Reduces damage taken from friendly fire from teammates.
• Embrace the Pain - Increases weapon fire rate and shield recharge delay.

Tier 3

• Thrill of the Kill - Percentage of overkill damage is transferred into health.
• Light the Fuse - Replaces Fight for your Life. Pull out a bundle of dynamite. Getting a revive with the final explosion gives a 40% bonus to movement speed for a period of time identical to what was left in Light the Fuse.
• Strip the Flesh - Increases explosive damage. Bonus is doubled during Fight for your Life or Light the Fuse.

Tier 4

• Redeem the Soul - Instantly revive teammates at the cost of downing oneself.
• Salt the Wound - Taking damage to health adds a stack (one stack per hit; up to 20 at level 5) of Salt the Wound, which increases melee and shotgun damage. Stacks decay after a few seconds if no health damage is taken.

Tier 5

• Silence the Voices - Increases melee damage and grants a static 12% chance of attacking oneself.

Tier 6

• Release the Beast - Activating Buzz Axe Rampage at 33% of max health instantly heals and transforms Krieg into a Badass Psycho Mutant, increasing melee damage by 100% and reducing damage received by 50%, respectively. Buzz Axe Rampage instantly recharges after Release the Beast ends. Release the Beast does not replace Buzz Axe Rampage; all bonuses added by Release the Beast are applied in addition to those already provided by Buzz-Axe Rampage, not instead of them.