Borderlands 4 Test Post

With a broader-than-ever selection of skill choices available in Borderlands 4, making meaningful skill choices can be overwhelming and keep you from getting stuck into the game’s action-packed content. This guide streamlines the process by providing a step-by-step selection of skills for Vex the Siren to allow you securely build your character in a way that allows you to comfortably level from 1-50.

Everybody plays through the game in their own way and will subsequently encounter a broad range of guns, equipment, monsters, and challenges. To account for this, the levelling build is created in such a way to avoid the hyper-specialisation seen in end-game builds, allowing it to function well in any scenario in addiction to being functional in both a single-player and multiplayer environment.

Quick Navigation

• Skill Overview and Playstyle
• Skill Point, Augment, and Capstone order
• Strategy
• Gun and Gear Priority
• Quick Tips

Skill Overview and Playstyle

This Levelling Build focuses around the use of the Dead Ringer Action Skill, allowing the use of Spectre and Reaper minions to be periodically summoned and aid you in battle. The specific skill point choices specialise in the use of Spectre minions, providing additional sources of range damage to help you take care of groups of enemies and bosses alike.

<Picture of complete 0/13/36 skills tree when available>

Skill Point, Augment, and Capstone order

Selecting your skills in the following order will allow you to be your strongest self at each given level when following this levelling build. This order aims to fill out the Dead Ringer skill tree first to allow the Dark Pact Capstone to be used as soon as possible before rounding out the build with damage-focused skills to help you continue to chew through enemies.

Skill Point	Skill	Skill Tree
Action Skill	Dead Ringer	Dead Ringer
1-5	Cold Iron	Dead Ringer
Augment	Coven	Dead Ringer
6	Sanguine Fiends	Dead Ringer
7-10	Grave Assault	Dead Ringer
11	Blood Sacrifice	Dead Ringer
12-15	Grave Quickening	Dead Ringer
16-20	Prismatic Weaponry	Dead Ringer
21-25	Obedient Fiends	Dead Ringer
Capstone	Dark Pact	Dead Ringer
Augment 2	Wither	Dead Ringer
26	Diener	Dead Ringer
27	Grave Quickening	Dead Ringer
28-32	Grave Sights	Incarnate
33-37	Grave Implements	Incarnate
38-40	Grave Power	Incarnate
41-45	Grave Fiends	Dead Ringer
46	Grave Assault	Dead Ringer
47-49	Recurrence	Dead Ringer

While it is important to stick to the general strategy of the build when allocating your skill points, there is a degree of flexibility for the ordering. You should always ensure you spend your first 25 points in the Dead Ringer skill tree and right-most sub-tree to access Dark Pact and your second Augment as soon as possible, but may otherwise tweak the order of your choices if it is better suited to your gun or playstyle preferences.

Strategy

Early Game (0-15 Skill Points)

In the early game you will have access to a low number of skill points and will therefore only have a small influence on your play. During this time, your primary focus should be making use of your Dead Ringer Action Skill where possible.

When using your Action Skill, you should try to use Spectres as much as possible. These minions make up a good portion of your damage when used correctly while also allowing you to place them in tactical locations to allow you to target hard-to-reach enemies, or simply continue fighting while hiding behind cover.

The low number of Skill Points available has the benefit of leaving the build in an ambiguous state, allowing you to use both Spectres and Reapers without too much inefficiency. This continues to hold true as you pick up your Coven Capstone and Grave Quickening skills. With this in mind, you should not hesitate to throw out a Reaper minion on occasion, especially against larger groups of enemies to help protect you and your Spectres or if you need emergency healing from the Coven passive effect.

Mid Game (16-24 Skill Points)

The mid game is where the build starts to specialise. Picking up the Prismatic Weaponry and Obedient Fiends skills greater bolsters the damage of your Spectres, meaning they are responsible for a much larger potion of your damage in battle and making it more important to use them wherever possible.

With the increase power of Spectres you should start to make an effort to ensure they survive as long as possible to maximise their damage output. If you are an aggressive player, you can try to place your Spectres behind you in tactical positions while you absorb the focus of enemies. However, this can be problematic against the increased intensity of mid-game battles. As an alternative you can opt to throw out 1 Reaper along with 2 of your Spectres to provide a tank to draw the focus of enemies, allowing your Spectres to survive for longer and deal more damage than simply having 3 Spectres that are quickly gunned down.

Late Game (25+ Skill Points)

The late game begins after picking up the Dark Pact Capstone and subsequently choosing Wither as a second augment. Once you have access to this ability you should try to stay aware of the health of your minions, especially your Spectres, so that you can activate it to fully heal them and prolong their duration. This added duration paired with the increase Cooldown Rate of Grave Quickening will allow you to get even more minions onto the battlefield to rain down bullets on your enemies.

As you push well beyond 25 Skill Points you will increase the amount of Kill Skills in your arsenal, rewarding you for staying in combat and keeping up the tempo of killing enemies. With this in mind, well-timed Reapers remain important for both their tanking ability and passive healing from Coven.

When you eventually pick up the Recurrence spell it is preferential to use guns with a higher fire rate such as SMGs or Assault Rifles to quickly build up stacks, if you were not using them already.

Teamplay

While this levelling build is constructed to be able to thrive in a solo environment, it also has some natural adaptability that makes it easy to slot into teams. In teams where your teammates are tanking their fair share of the damage you can forgo the use of Reapers and unleash the full power of your Spectre army. Conversely, if your teammates prefer to fight from a distance you can switch over to summoning Reapers to tank while they deal damage. In this situation you can temporarily swap the Wither augment for Banshee’s Wail.

Gun and Gear Priority

As a levelling build you have a large degree of freedom when it comes to guns and gear, if a boss drops a powerful new legendary then it is probably your best choice. However, you can loosely use the following tips to help decide your gear choices:

• Look for fast-firing guns or those with a high damage output to synergise with Recurrence and your Kill Skills. This will usually come in the form of mid-ranged Assault Rifles or SMGs
• Prioritise Shields over Armour. Your minions draw enough attention of enemies for you comfortably dip out of combat to recharge your shields whenever needed.
• Look for Class Mods that further boost your build, such as gun damage, minion damage, or Action Skill Cooldown reduction. Some skill trees have hidden gems like Reawakening or Infernal Sum that are too inefficient to pick up by normal means.
• Choose an offensive Medkit. As Coven covers your on-demand healing needs, you are free to use Medkits purely as a source of temporary damage.
• Choose the highest-damage Ordnance you can find. As Reapers and Spectres both provide a means to easily target enemies behind cover there is no reliance on grenades and you are free to choose whatever high-damage weapon you want.

Quick Tips

• Summon minions as often as possible.
• Do not be afraid to make use of Reapers. Their ability to keep you alive can be invaluable.
• Place your minions tactically. Being able to choose where you summon your Spectres will allow you to target specific enemies or simply have enough target to shoot at. However, placing them all in the same location increase the chance they are wiped out by a single explosion or melee enemy.
• Once in combat, stay in the fight as much as possible to maintain the boosts of your Kill Skills.