Rory Norris, Guides Writer
Last week I was: putting off playing Battlefield 2042 just to earn cool cosmetics in Battlefield 6.
This week I’ve been: planning builds for every single skill tree in Borderlands 4, hoping it would help me pick a character, but actually leaving me more conflicted.
I’ve played a lot of Borderlands over the years; Borderlands 2 is one of my most-played games of all time, and while Borderlands 3’s story is naff, its gameplay is oh so good. Naturally, I feel like I’ve got to put all these hours spent to good use, and there’s no better way to do that than to attempt to predict the Borderlands 4 meta.
Since we have access to all four Vault Hunters’ full skill trees and know a bit about the gear we’ll have with us in Borderlands 4, it’s already possible to cook up builds and try to gauge the meta. Of course, there’s a chance details change before launch, or that skills aren’t as strong in action as they are on paper, but hey, being confidently incorrect is part of the fun of this little experiment. Plus, we’ve only seen a fraction of the endgame loot on offer, and gear is traditionally just as build-defining as the skills you pick.
When it comes to the meta in a Borderlands game—which doesn’t actually matter, and I’d always urge you to play whoever you think looks cool—it often comes down to bossing and mobbing. In other words, how quickly you can rip through boss health bars and wipe out trash mobs.
Right off the bat, I’ll make some bold predictions:
- Vex will be the strongest Vault Hunter
- Amon will be the weakest Vault Hunter, but will have a broken shotgun-melee build
- Harlowe will be a sleeper hit, starting weak and growing in power massively at max level/endgame
- There will be Rafa Arc Knives sickos that will die on that hill, even if it’s suboptimal
- Rafa’s Overdrive and movement speed build is a speedrunner’s dream and will undoubtedly break something
Vex: The Siren top-dog
Watch On
In Borderlands 4, I think there’s one character that does both mobbing and bossing better than anyone: Vex. Taking a look at the Siren’s Incarnate skill tree, you’ll quite quickly realise that you can build around kinetic damage (with the added bonus of causing bleed) and high crit to activate Kill Skills without needing to…well…kill anyone—meaning you can easily activate them in boss fights, unlike other characters or even other Vex builds.
Using the Witchy Trigger Finger augment and Vibe Check capstone, you’ll quickly be able to ramp up gun damage while also reloading your weapon. Plus, Vex also has strong lifesteal options in this tree with Leeching Attunement and Essence Leech, which you can pair with Blood is Power for even more bonus kinetic damage based on your lifesteal.
While I think Vex’s Vexcalation Incarnate build will undoubtedly be her strongest and easiest build to use, there’s another I’ll be keeping an eye on: The Fourth Seal/Dead Ringer build. This is primarily because of the Heirloom capstone, which grants spectres a copy of Vex’s equipped gun.
Any Zane mains from Borderlands 3 will immediately know what this means, but it opens the door for some wacky builds that abuse specific weapons, as was the case with the Sand Hawk or Anarchy last time. However, this tree has some checks in place that look like they will restrain it more than Zane’s Double Agent tree. It’s boom or bust.
Harlowe: The Siren-wannabe Gravitar
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Another contender for the throne is Harlowe, thanks to her Creative Bursts/Chroma Accelerator and Seize the Day/Zero-Point trees. Personally, I’m really looking forward to trying a full ice, crit, ricochet build using the Vengeance tree and a Jacobs weapon. With key skills like the Strange Attractor augment, Ripple Effect, and heaps of ice/freeze perks, capped off with the Triple Point perk, you’ll be able to put whole hordes in stasis and wipe them out with ice-cold ricochets, further boosted by entangle’s damage-share.
The two downsides to this build are that bosses can’t be put in stasis (though they’ll still take damage and become entangled, so it could still hold its own) and that it only really comes together in later levels.
The Creative Bursts/Chroma Accelerator build likely won’t have such an issue. Specialising in radiation damage and gun damage with skills like the Neutron Capture augment, Enriched, Poisoned Sun, Glow Up, and Chain Reactor, as well as some perks from Cosmic Brilliance, including Neutron Decay, you should be able to stack up quite the receipt of damage multipliers. Even better is that this should work on bosses and trash mobs alike. I can imagine this being incredibly lethal with a Vladof or Jacobs weapon—or both using the new licensed part system.
Rafa: The Exo-Soldier and speedrunner’s dream
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Rafa is perhaps the biggest ‘wait and see’ Vault Hunter, as, at least on paper, he’s the character that’s screaming out for a level cap increase the most. His skill trees generally require you to go all-in to get strong returns, which means you’re missing out on very powerful upgrades from other trees that would help pull everything together.
I’d say that his Remote Agent/Peacebreaker Cannons build is most likely to withstand the early and endgame the best, especially if you build into critical hit ricochet using Asymmetric Warfare, Errant Spark, Lateral Plinking, and the Instinto augment. His innate Overdrive bonus is potentially the strongest Vault Hunter perk of them all, and Remote Agent is best set up to take advantage of it.
I won’t lie, though, despite being an Axton and Moze fan, autocannons feel a tad…boring. Screw the meta, I’d rather play a full Arc Knives build. Slap together Midnight Oil, El Borracho, Cruel Accrual, the Dead Man Walking augment and basically any of the capstones, and you’ll have a never-ending Arc Knives build that exponentially increases in damage. Depending on what the damage caps are on some of these skills, and how many flying or mobile enemies and bosses there are, this could potentially be a sleeper hit. It’s certainly the most unique build of the bunch.
Amon: The action skill-spamming Forgeknight
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If I had to put money on it, I’d say that Amon is going to be the weakest character overall in Borderlands 4, as his trees aren’t as cohesive and full of broken skills as the other Vault Hunters. Like Rafa, he’d benefit quite a lot from more available skill points.
However, I have found one build that has the potential to be meta, and that’s a Calamity/Onslaughter build primarily focused on getting up close and personal to melt mobs and bosses with a fire shotgun. Provided there’s a strong shotgun to pair with this build, similar to The Butcher, Trevonator, or The Anarchy from Borderlands 3, using Bullet Storm, Metal Urge, Into the Fray, Rearm, and his horde of skills around increasing DPS the more full your health and shields, there’s a good chance to stack effects for big numbers.
So long as you sneak in a punch every few seconds, you’ll be free to unload never-ending shotgun shells down range, while remaining pretty tanky so long as Onslaught is active.
I also dug myself into a hole by making an early tier list
In perhaps my most masochistic move, I’m going to attempt to rank all of the Vault Hunters’ skill trees and potential builds, just to see how wrong (or right) I am later down the line:
Tier | Character and Skill Tree |
|---|---|
S | Vex: Incarnate, Harlowe: Creative Bursts |
A | Harlowe: Seize the Day, Amon: Calamity, Rafa: This Year’s Gimmick, Rafa: Remote Agent |
B | Amon: Cybernetics, Amon: Vengeance, Vex: The Fourth Seal, Rafa: People Person |
C | Harlowe: Cosmic Brilliance, Vex: Here Comes Trouble |
Few skill trees are as stacked as Vex’s Incarnate and Harlowe’s Creative Bursts tree, though one thing I think we’ll run into is that the level 50 cap, making for a maximum of 49 skill points, really isn’t enough.
More so than ever, Borderlands 4’s skill tree encourages you to go pretty deep into them, meaning you’ll have few points left for other skill tree investments. I think future level cap increases could have a massive impact on the meta, especially for the ‘weaker’ Vault Hunters and builds.
For example, Vex’s minion playstyle is split between her The Fourth Seal and Here Comes Trouble skill trees, so you won’t be able to make the most of either build quite yet (unless you turn The Fourth Seal into a gun-focused build, of course). Likewise, Rafa’s Remote Agent and People Person trees both have some great Overdrive boosts that could be used for an Overdrive-focused build if you could squeeze out some more points.
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