It's not even been out for a full week yet, and there is already a mountain of broken builds in Borderlands 4, from Vex bleed builds to Harlowe's pocket nuke and Rafa's army of gun buffs. But there's one character we all severely underestimated, Amon.
Looking at his skill trees, he's a bit…bland compared to the other characters, and after picking him as my main Vault Hunter, it's not far from the truth. He's generally quite clunky and just doesn't have as many broken perks as the other characters.
Well, it turns out that Amon is secretly the most busted character of the bunch (and that's saying something), thanks to a potentially unintended interaction between the Berserk and There Is Only Death perks, and the Groundbreaker specialisation. The kicker is that all you need to do is punch.
The goal is to stack as much bonus damage as possible from Berserk (cryo) and Groundbreaker (kinetic). You might question how we benefit from Groundbreaker, since it only triggers on non-melee damage, but the bonus cryo damage applied to melee from Berserk actually does the trick. So, every time you punch, you deal increased damage and infinitely stack even more bonus damage for the next punch.
Most enemies will die in a single haymaker, including bosses, so stacking up to billions of damage generally isn't that realistic; the fight will be over long before you could theoretically reach that many stacks. Nevertheless, content creator Moxsy has been able to hit for over a quadrillion damage in a single punch against the target dummy. It's safe to say that there's nothing that could survive that one.
Here's what the skill tree looks like, though you'll also need the Groundbreaker specialisation for this build to work:
Skill | Investment | Effect |
|---|---|---|
Impetus (Calamity tree) | 3/3 | Kill Skill: Amon gains increased shield regeneration rate and movement speed for a duration. |
Discombobulate (Calamity tree) | 5/5 | Amon gains melee critical strike chance. |
Tritanium Knuckles (Calamity tree) | 5/5 | Increases Amon's melee and skill damage. |
Gut Punch (Calamity tree) | 1/3 | Melee damage and ordnance damage have a chance to apply weakness to enemies for a duration. Weakened enemies deal reduced damage and take more damage. Weakness is affected by status effect duration, and is itself considered a status effect. |
The Best Defence (Calamity tree) | 2/5 | Amon gains a super shield when dealing melee damage. |
Berserk (Calamity tree) | 5/5 (plus points from class mod) | Whenever Amon activates his Forgeskill, he becomes berserk for a duration, gaining slow immunity and bonus cryo damage with guns and melee. |
There Is Only Red (Calamity tree) | 3/3 | Kill Skill: Whenever Amon kills an enemy while Berserk is active, partially restore its duration and increase the bonus cryo damage effect. |
Brimming Vigor (Calamity tree) | 2/5 | Amon gains increased maximum health capacity and deals increased melee damage the more full his health is. |
My Touch Is Death (Calamity tree) | 3/3 | Whenever Amon deals melee damage, there is a chance to activate Kill Skills. |
Into The Fray (Calamity tree) | 5/5 | Amon gains increased damage dealt and damage reduction based on his distance from the enemy. The closer the enemy, the greater the bonus. |
Wrath of Nature (Vengeance tree) | 2/5 | Amon gains increased status effect chance and cryo effectiveness. |
The Thrill (Vengeance tree) | 3/3 | Amon gains missing health regeneration. Every time you take or absorb non-status effect damage, you gain a stack of Resolute, which increases this effect. |
Cryonic Thrum (Vengeance tree augment) | NA | While Scourge is active, Amon taunts enemies and sends out a cryonic pulse every second, dealing cryo damage to enemies and restoring allies' health. While aiming, Amon's movement speed is reduced, but Amon gains bonus cryo damage with guns and consumes vengeance on each gunshot. |
Eternal (Vengeance tree) | 5/5 | Amon gains increased action skill duration and gun swap speed. |
Warrior's Cup (Vengeance tree) | 5/5 | Whenever Amon uses a repkit while his action skill is active, partially restore action skill duration. |
As Moxsy mentions, you can technically use whatever action skill you'd like in this build, since each one has melee options. However, the Onslaughter action skill—which is quite literally a rocket punch—is probably the worst option here, largely because of how slow and clunky it is, which'll limit how quickly you can ramp up your damage.
It's finally time for Amon's time in the spotlight, at least until this build gets nerfed and he's sent back to the pit. As an Amon main, I can only hope the reaper will come for all the other broken builds first.
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