The best Amon builds in Borderlands 4: Forgeknight guide

Built like a Viking, Borderlands 4's Amon is the biggest playable character the series has seen. As the Forgeknight, the best Amon builds use a variety of elemental weapons, from hammers, axes, and swords, to shields and even drones to get up in enemies' faces before pulverising them.

With arguably the most complex action skills and trait of all the Borderlands 4 characters (it's certainly more hands-on than Rafa's, for example), Amon could prove challenging to wrap your head around at first. Fear not, though, as I'll go over three of the best Amon builds at max level below, covering the skills, augments, and capstones to pick, alongside what gear works with them.

Best Amon builds in Borderlands 4

Borderlands 4 - Official Gameplay Overview - Amon - YouTube

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Like the other Vault Hunters, Amon has three distinct skill trees to pick from:

• Calamity: This tree has one goal in mind, and that's to become the iconic Doom Slayer. Run around with faster movement speed and rocket-punch enemies into dust. Obviously, there's a big focus on melee damage and action skill use in this tree, though there's also a lot of potential for hybrid builds using close-range weapons.
• Vengeance: Amon's tanky, brawler playstyle couldn't be more apparent than here, using both a shield, damage-boosting barrier, and other heavy weapons to stay kicking and dish out the pain. This tree plays very well into ordnance-based builds, using heavy weapons for massive damage.
• Cybernetics: Fully taking advantage of Amon's arsenal of Forge weapons, this tree is all about spamming action skills to deal heavy damage and control the battlefield. You can swap between different elemental Forge weapons, spawn Forgedrones for extra support, and use Forgeskills to detonate enemies for even more damage.

Amon's trait is Forgeskill: Amon gains a unique Forgeskill ability depending on his equipped action skill. These are activated by holding the action skill button, and are given additional properties with certain skills, augments, and capstones.

Now onto the best builds for Amon, beginning with his Calamity/Onslaughter setup. In the tables below, I've listed the skills, augments, and capstones in the order you'll want to unlock them, though remember that you can always respec if you'd like to tweak things while levelling.

Amon build: Doom Slayer

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• Primary skill tree: Calamity
• Action skill: Onslaughter
• Favoured element: Incendiary

Ever wanted to become the Doom Slayer in Borderlands? Then there's nothing closer than Amon's Calamity build, which lets you charge around with a flaming fist while you blast away with a gun in your other hand. The end goal is to stay close enough to hug your enemy while you weave punches with flaming shotgun shots, dishing out massive damage in short bursts without relying on Kill Skills. Because of this, the build works well against normal enemies and bosses, so long as you can reach them.

With how often you'll be in the thick of it, I recommend taking advantage of the new armour shield in Borderlands 4. Armour shields differ from the standard shields in that they constantly regenerate (even in combat) and come with a flat damage reduction. They're very much intended for aggressive melee playstyles, especially with many legendary versions coming with perks that buff melee, movement speed, and other effects on segment breaks.

This build is centred around Onslaughter's passive bonus incendiary damage with guns while it's active. Unsurprisingly, then, we've got What Burns Within to increase incendiary damage further, Tritanium Knuckles to boost melee and skill damage, and Gut Punch to apply weakness, which both reduces enemy damage while increasing your own just for punching them.

Since Onslaughter constantly restores your shields, I recommend picking the Battleborn perk from the Vengeance tree to further increase your damage based on your health, even doubling the bonus when you're at full health. The Harbinger and Impetus perks (from the Calamity tree) go a long way in ensuring your shields are stocked, too.

This build also deals a lot of status effect damage between Onslaughter, the Molten Slam Forgeskill, the Pyroclast augment's fire storm, your guns, and the weakness effect. Naturally, we've got a few perks to capitalise on this: Master the Storm amps up both status effect damage and duration, Bullet Storm boosts gun damage after applying a status, and Burning Ramparts raises your fire rate and status effect chance based on your shields. Harbinger and Impetus show their worth once again here, too.

The most important perk, though, is Into the Fray. This makes it so you take less damage and deal more damage based on your distance from the enemy. The closer you are, the better. It's a lot less dangerous getting in the enemies' face to punch and blast them with a shotgun once you've got this perk. Plus, punching also partially restores your ammo capacity.

Here's where you should spend your skill points:

Amon build: Iceplosions

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• Primary skill tree: Vengeance
• Action skill: Scourge
• Favoured element: Cryo

The Vengeance skill tree really only has one clear build option: ordnance damage (bonus points for cryo), though that's not necessarily a bad thing, as it does it incredibly well. Primarily, this build focuses on increasing ordnance damage and status effects, which combine for some lethal burst damage in both single-target and AoE situations.

Unsurprisingly, the first thing you'll want to do is increase your cryo effectiveness and ordnance damage (which also improves Scourge's power) and cooldown. I recommend picking up a few points in Scorched Kairos, Wrath of Nature, and Ancient Ways. Likewise, Machinist, a Kill Skill to recharge your ordnance, comes in clutch to keep the ball rolling, and Tail of the Comet creates cryo hazards on ordnance hits.

Towards the end of the levelling process, you should also get a few skills from the Cybernetics tree, including Cacophony for bonus ordnance damage and Endless Bombardment for a chance to refund grenades on use, plus heavy ordnance ammo when damaging enemies. This goes a long way to helping sustain this ordnance-based playstyle.

However, you will eventually run out of ordnance, so perks like Icy Rage and Bellows to increase your gun damage are handy. Similarly, your action skill and Forgeskills are heavy hitters in this build since they inherently deal cryo ordnance damage. Plus, this build uses the Eternal Winter augment and Glacial Rapture capstone, effectively letting you use your action skill as three successive blasts (the last one also does bonus damage) and replacing Firewall with icy whips and hazards.

Here's where you should spend your skill points:

Amon build: Cyber Viking

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• Primary skill tree: Cybernetics
• Action skill: Crucible
• Favoured element: Incendiary

Amon's Cybernetics skill tree is the most action skill spammy setup of the bunch, seeing you lob massive axes (swords later on) and a twinned axe like a boomerang that'll prime and detonate enemies. You'll also create Forgedrones to lend a helping hand. Between all that, you'll have amped up gun damage and critical hit chance, so it's a build that can do it all.

On the ability front, you'll want to nab the Cast Iron and Destruction Engine perks, increasing Forgeskill cooldown and damage, respectively. Likewise, What Burns Within, Discombobulate, and Titanium Knuckles from the top of the Calamity skill tree all combine to increase the damage of your action skill. Since these don't require kills to trigger, like lots of similar skills across the four Vault Hunters, they're invaluable against tougher enemies and bosses, where it's typically harder to rack up Kill Skill stacks.

Grab a point in Tempered Pyre and Twin Vipers to spawn two Forgedrones for bonus passive damage, which'll all have their durations restored when you use a Forgeskill. While these drones won't deal heaps of damage by themselves, they can be boosted using the Escalation and Honed Point perk. The main reason for having these drones is that Honed Point also causes them to boost your action skill cooldown when they critically hit.

Last but not least is how this all contributes to boosting your gun damage. The most important skill here is Bellows, which increases weapon damage when you activate a Forgeskill. Then there's Executioner to increase critical hit damage, which is doubled for a duration after dealing melee damage—including your action skill and Forgeskill. Any increases to elemental damage will also apply to your guns, as well, so long as it's not a kinetic weapon

Here's where you should spend your skill points:

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