I feel like Hades shakles could of also made the list but other than that I highly agree with it. For best in no order 1. Leadership is one of my all time favorite capstone's because it's simple but does so much. 2. Ruin for auto slag and you are phaselocking anyway 3. One for Each of Ya 4 to 6, All 3 of zeros 7. Bloodsplosion 8. Avatar 9. Death follows close 10. Short fuse
That's weird! I just started watching a derch video yesterday showcasing doppelganger skills, welcome back to BL's, I remember you being my plug for bl2 knowledge back in the hayday 🎉🎉
I don't see Hades Shackles as Capstone Worthy, but it does all the stuff for Maelstorm stacks. Only if the Nova scaled from Grenades damage did better.
@@Junkmeister yeah the loaderbot becomes raid boss 9000 if you spec that tree, and it copies your grenades i think or something, some interaction makes its grenades do literal billions of damage for some reason
@@stephenlewis6922 they did do that for Zane. His spy class mod from arms race can add the purple capstone. I like getting his blue and orange capstones and putting the remaining points into purple, so it almost feels like having 3 full trees (minus eraser, which i want)
I have to agree. Zane has two of the best Capstone's in BL3 with Double Barrel being #1 and Death Follows Close being #2. The synergy of these capstones with both these trees is OP, and I'm here for it. My boyo has come a long way.
@@bakomusha Yes it was said by the devs. They said there wasn’t gonna be extra vault hunters in the games dlc packs because they wanted to instead focus on expanding the build options for the 4 default characters instead, which was the purple trees that got added.
It’s a lot more work to add new animations voice acting interactions with weapons and new mechanics extra. They took the easy route to add more late game content. Can’t say until borderlands4 comes out to see if the slaking was because of this project I hope.
Hear me out but the Phoenix capstone for Lilith is insane. With a Specialist Class Mod and a Fire Relic, you walk next to enemies and they die. Playing with my mate in the General Knoxx DLC, I managed to clear out 90% of the enemies, including the cars just by Phasewalking. Badass enemies didn’t last 2 seconds. Watching the health bars literally disappear in seconds by simply standing next to them is possibly the most fun thing I’ve experienced in Borderlands.
The Phoenix is super powerful in combat but it always feels like there's so many barrels that explode right on top of you the second you get within range
Lilith is just a really good character. I never was impressed with Roland. He's got decent stat boosting skills but his support skills always underperformed. The shield on the turret was useless as it barely reached chest high while crouched. It also went away as soon as Roland went down so the turrets revival skill couldn't actually be used to revive yourself. Axton in BL2 is just a better designed Roland. Brick is only usable if you're doing an explosives build. His other trees are good early game but fall off pretty quickly and are just bad late game. Mordecai just does a lot of damage.
As a Krieg player, Bloodsplosion is easily a top 10 capstone. That says a lot, considering RtB makes melee astonishingly powerful at OP10. Bloodsplosion just has it all: It can work with melee builds! It can work with gun builds! It can work with fire builds! It can work with hybrid builds! IT CAN ONE SHOT RAID BOSSES!!! (Pete is easy, but I’ve seen people bloodsplode Vora, Dragons, and maybe even Vermi).
Can one shot and can one shot reliably are two different things. Pyro Pete sure, but Vora and Dragons are way more RNG dependent cause they move so much.
Krieg's least good capstone is still really strong, passively spreading the fire debuff to stack up or maintain his Hellborn self-burn buffs is incredible for enabling non-ele proc weapons on the character
Axtons “double up” skill is my fav capstone, gives him a second barrel on his turret and both shoot slag, its an absolute game changer for UVHM, especially when combined with “mag lock”and “longbow turret” makes you able to slag enemies from any angle without swapping weapons, you Can even combine it with the “gemeni” capstone in his survival tree for two turrets.
@@Salty_Pistachios it totally does make alot of fights easier. on my current UVHM run its the only form of slag present in my build and im getting through my play through pretty effortlessly.
i have been an axton main since the game released, and have leveled him to every op level. He is very balanced and capable even against raid bosses, outclasses even maya against some as far as speed of kills. Salvador although, is way more powerful, he and krieg are borderline invincible with the right build. Axton mainly has some really solid gun damage handling and movement speed bonuses that make great balanced builds, also his grenade damage buff plus increased grenade capacity and rocket damage compared to other characters actually make him very viable for explosive builds. People in the community used to say he was underpowered, because he is a jack of all trades master of none type class, but he has seen more popularity recently ive noticed. he is the easiest to learn hardest to master as far as bl2 vault hunters go, that and his funny dialogue are why hes my fav
Fl4k's purple tree focusing on survivability just seems anathema to Fl4k's expertise in being both a glass cannon alongside aggro management; Their pet can already revive them partway through the green tree for a single point, so more survivability just feels redundant like with Running on Fumes, since Fl4k doesn't really need the extra survivability, their pet is hearty enough that when holding aggro, Fl4k can already be ignored by enemies.
@@BearWith_You and BL2 made you pay for literally EVERYTHING aside from the Lilith DLC..... it's almost like companies need money to keep making games, or something like that
You go from glass cannon to an unstoppable force and lose maybe 20% total damage loss for Fl4k themselves but your pet is literally the strongest its ever been
Laughs in "give pet a copy of your shield"..... granted, that doesn't make up for the rest of the tree being pretty terrible, but if you set it up correctly, purple tree can do some serious work with Fl4k
I'm a Gaige main myself and honestly I agree with K6. I used it alot and it just felt worse and worse each time I used it. Not only does it cost Anarchy stacks but it just means one less shotgun blast wich I would much rather be doing. Gaige is built for close range AoE hit and run. Not firing your gun means less ricochets, less blood soaked shield procs, and less Anarchy stacking. A Jakobs shotgun with a magazine of 1 will always out preform With Claws, I only use it as an extra heal when things are getting dicey.
Before they made the great and logical decision to swap its position with Death Follows Close, Zane's "Seein' Red" was one of the best capstones in the game. It was the whole reason you worked your way down his Blue skill tree in the early BL3 days as it meant a huge power spike for him (at least until the "Seein' Dead" class mod was introduced).
An honorable mention for terrible capstones is distributed denial. It's no longer the capstone in Zane's undercover tree, but it barely worked at all in the early days of the game (and still doesn't work as a tier 3 tree)
I wonder if the nukem was supposed to be explosive and fire. Honestly missed opportunity to have this in some form of unique or even as a skill for axton to have a chance for explosive dmg he deals to also deal fire dmg and burn DOT.
But it literally does do explosive damage and set people on fire, even in every clip he put in shows it doing explosive damage and then a fire dot! Am I crazy or something???
Hmm, ten best capstones... I'd have to say, in no particular order: Megavore (20% crit chance on every shot no matter where it hits is insanely good, especially for the glass cannon that is FL4K) Double Barrel (giving Zane's clone a dupe of your gun is just kinda broken when the clone doesn't need to reload) Wrath of the Goddess (okay maybe not the best capstone in terms of function but playing Athena like she's Captain America is just so much fun) Promote the Ranks (similar to Double Barrel, having Jack clones is already a godsend and having a badass clone is even moreso) One For Each of Ya (giving Nisha a second copy of her pistol basically makes her a pseudo-Salvador, and we all know how broken Salvador could be) Come At Me Bro (a health restore and damage reduction is already fantastic on its own, and the taunt for drawing aggro is always going to be a handy trick in co-op. Plus Salvador flips the bird to activate it and that's hilarious) No Kill Like Overkill (the excess damage added to Salvador's weapons just creates a snowball effect of stacking excess damage to bowl over everything in Sal's way) Double Up (Axton getting a second turret is nice, but the turrets now dealing Slag damage makes this skill invaluable simply for allowing Axton to slag enemies without having to swap weapons) Ruin (again, allowing a BL2 character to inflict slag without swapping weapons is golden. This could have also been Scorn, but I went with Ruin since I feel Maya is less likely to be throwing around a lot of melee attacks, though mayhaps it's the better skill for bosses) Death Bl0ss0m (being able to apply Zer0's death mark from range is incredibly useful in all contexts, especially since death mark doesn't just apply to Zero's damage but also his allies') And as an honorable mention I'd like to point towards Lilith's Phoenix from BL1, since while most capstones are just meh in that game, Phoenix's double whammy of not consuming ammo and causing fire around Lilith is pretty potent. Phase Strike is also pretty good from the sheer damage multiplier (800%!!!), but a bit more situational since it's melee-out-of-phasewalk only.
I ran a ThoughtLock buiid with Maya and loved it, reason being I usually killed the Toughtlocked enemy first, let the process transfer to another enemy and then the next. Depending on how many enemy were around I could keep a crowd off of me and at a distance as well. As for the best capstone, Krieg's release the Beast, Zero's Critical Ascension and Salvador's No Kill Like Overkill are all great IMO.
I remember when Zane's capstone got swapped. I hada redo my entire build to get it back. Thats how you know it was a good skill worthy of being a capstone
I wasn't a fan of that change, personally. Having his now-capstone at the middle of the tree made that tree perfect, since you didn't have to spec all the way up but still gave you the option to go further to get some solid skills that were pre-capstone. Making it the capstone instead just makes it less worthwhile because of the mandatory extra point investment.
@reddragonpress The whole point of the change is Death Follows Close is too good that they force you to get other things before getting it now, severely nerfing Zane overall. If you got just Death Follows Close you can then allocate those points elsewhere, making him stronger in the process
@@BearWith_You Oh, I was talking about Zane's green tree 🤣 For some reason I didn't realize you were talking about his blue tree, which *also* got the capstone swapped.
Nisha's "one for each of ya" and "the unforgiven" for best cap skills, I have an MC'ing FL4K and it's really sad even with an MC'ing class mod, grenade, blue cap skill and the purple tree action skill MC augment.
My absolute favorite capstone has got to be bloodsplosion. It's probably my all time favorite skill in borderlands and the sound of a bloodsplosion chain breaking the audio makes my brain happy. In general I think Kreig has a bunch of useful capstones, they all fit well and feel pretty impactful. Though his fireball capstone is not flashy, it is very good for maintaining flame stacks if you are doing other elemental damage types. such as running through a loader area with a corrosive kitten.
Before Mayhem existed I would have said Amara green capstone. Turning the entire map into a giant game of pinball where the ball is actually a wrecking ball is an insane amount of fun. It was the most fun I had before Spirit Driver existed
What I love about Axtons Nuke Skill basically being neutered by doing FIRE Damage, is that they did the EXACT SAME THING to Claptraps "Hyperion Punch" Skill, which, as mods show, would actually have been a decently powerful Melee override for him if they made it deal explosion damage instead. Because that makes sense, give him a Skill Tree all about blowing stuff up and then make the one Skill thats actually not a passive deal FIRE Damage.
Many Must Fall is soooo much fun in a first playthrough but then falls off a cliff at TVH and higher. Death Bl0ss0m will always be a favorite thanks to marking multiple enemies and being a source of slag in UVH.
@@QuantemDeconstructor Yeah BL2 was a mess of Damage Type Classification. Making you have to do a shit ton of research for more Obscure Weapon and Gear Usage.
@@dr.dylansgame5583 I'm glad that BL3 do this "splash damage" blanket classification. Now what constitutes as splash damage or not is another matter entirely.
The Trespass skill is amazing against the Eridian enemies, but most enemies in Borderlands 1 just don't have big shields, it would've been amazing in the sequels.
Most of these picks are fine, but Clear the Mind is phenomenal. Even if you are stacking all 5 elements on Amara (which you probably would be), against an Armoured enemy. You're losing Half your fire damage, half your radiation damage and 35% of your shock damage, unless you're specced into Clear the Mind, then all those elements do 100% of their damage against all of the different health bars, Clear the Mind gives Amara WAY more damage, in every situation, with the only real downside being that it's in the purple tree.
@axxjazz. I'm not saying it's worth investing into, but calling it bad is just not right. It doesn't matter, on Amara you'll be doing all 5 element all the time, so this skill makes the less effective of the 2 elements and makes them stronger
I actually love that Fl4K skill that doubles your Shield. That carried me a lot on insanely hard fights (+ the shield heals) and having the modifier that gives a point in it now the shield gets tripled
Moses purple tree capstone is actually really good The fact that I could run from the start of the guardian takedown to halfway through without iron bear running out time is ridiculous
@@Ki11ersix I gotcha I gotcha 😊 I was running full iron bear mode that's why I mentioned it It was funny to see iron bear decimate everything 😂 I remember day 1 it was used as FFYL saver now it's useful
Pre nerf cloudkill should definitely get an honorable mention. For some likely less mentioned capstones, I recall Wonderlands having really good ones. Especially graveborn and spell slinger.
Fl4k's skill that lets a pet revive you feels like a capstone by itself, the pet immediately starts reviving you. I've gone down so many times in a row that the timer decrease that gives you less time in fight for your life each time you go down just gave up, there's almost zero threat of dying with that skill. Between that and the healing effect skill of his ability to grow his pet makes me wonder why a "survivabilty" skill tree even exists
Hmmm. One that sounds a bit obvious but I'm going to say it anyway, Zer0's Kunai/Death Blossom. Very useful regardless of the build you use for Zer0 and it also gives you an option of slag so you don't have to shoot to slag a target and also of course the fact that it debuffs the enemy is the cherry on top. Even after Gearbox kept nerfing it over and over again, it didn't stop people from taking it because it's so crucial.
High Fives Guys maybe shouldn't be a capstone but it's hilarious running up to enemies with your hand up and getting 50% fire rate, 15% gun damage and 3% health regen while taking no damage from the hit.
It's a pretty great capstone for the tree itt's in, which focuses on teamplay. you revive an ally with 02 since clap doesn't need it, pop highfive, they melee on get up, instant buffs. you can pop it before and during boss fights as well. Like sure, it isnt the best if you're playing solo like he is... but it clearly wasnt meant for solo.
Bloodsplosion isn't even that good. It's just an AoE attack with immense versatility and damage potential that stacks with just about every Kreig build and can humilate the Pyro Pete raid boss. Complete trash
Shout out to Zane's Distributed Denial which launched as a capstone skill and did not work properly. I haven't played BL3 in years but last time I checked it only worked with maybe 2 shield types.
Axton's Gemini is insane because you basically become invincible since mobs will target your turrets almost exclusively, and when you pair it with double up you basically never have to slag enemies yourself!
Moze's Short Fuse is crazy good when paired with Means of Destruction from earlier in the same tree, Demolition Woman. Your capstone turns most shots into an aoe while the skill adds a chance to regen ammo and grenades when dealing aoe damage. Great synergy.
The pre sequel had a huge issue with the co-op skills, with Aurelia being the worst (in my opinion). I didn't pick it up until there was basically no one to co-op with so that skill tree was a write-off from day one.
Dude, Dominace is very useful when heavy mobbing. It's basically an on effect Red Fang taunt centered on the affected enemy. You trigger it constantly with aimed shot crits. Works the same as Mesmer. It's awesome for crowd control and creating breathing room on Fade Away cooldowns. Very useful for Maliwan Takedown and any place with mob density like Slaughter Shaft, etc.
Or you can get peregrine a good grenade and press the action skill button on your keyboard and watch everything die before the effect of dominance could run out.
@@Ki11ersix Tho having it as a skill allows you to use grenade slot for something more powerful like Hunter Seeker (which can also trigger Dominance on top of a bunch of other skills).
Honestly, I think you could make a case for Zero's Death Blossom to be pretty high on a list of "best capstones" in Borderlands. Not only does it apply Death Mark, but it also pretty consistently applies slag, which is really the main selling point here. You're just stacking damage multipliers at that point. That's not to say that the other elemental damage effects aren't nice, but having a free "slag enemy" button is pretty strong. Some people will still run a Grog Nozzle on Zero after taking Death Blossom, but I really don't recommend it because Death Blossom is just that consistent.
Looking at the nuke footage it does seem like the nuke does "some" explosive damage before tapering off into fire damage as if to try and simulate the fallout of a nuclear blast however it appears to be only 2 ticks of it, one when the nuke goes off and another as the enemies around it are pushed back via the nuke shockwave/force.
High Five is actually interesting, but would be a lot better if it could avoid the damage that triggers it when it comes from enemies. It would feel more like a capstone.
Personally, I'd put Zane's Confident Competence on the top of this list. It actually used to be his middle of the green tree perk with Dustributed Denial being the capstone, but that got swapped around. And for a capstone, up to 35% Gun damage and 50% Accuracy are just outstandingly poor. Even aside from the Gun damage absurdity that is Violent Momentum, Zane can get 40% gun damage from literally the first skill in his orange tree and another 30 from the second row in orange. Commitment is another 40% if you want it. You can also get infinitely more accuracy from Man of Focus in the purple tree, even if it's more conditional. Even if they just straight-up turned 35% Gun damage into 350% Gun damage, it would have been a dubious capstone, but at least it might have been worth picking for builds that don't wanna invest into the blue tree at all. As for the best: I'd say Double Barrel is pretty high, that skill can basically play the game for you with the right equipment. Death Bl0ss0m also is really great since it applies Death mark and actually deals quite respectable damage on its own. Double up is great because it just applies so much slag over an extended period of time.
Moze's capstone skill in her blue tree. It basically turns all kinds of weapons into splash weapons. And since Moze boosts splash damage with her blue tree... you can do the math.
My faves in no particular order from Borderlands 2, 3 and Pre-Sequel Kriegs bloodsplosion and release the beast. Nishas one for each of ya. Jacks leadership. Flaks megavore. Mozes short fuze. Axtons double up.
Axton's Double Up capstone singlehandedly makes UVHM so much less of a pain in the ass for mobbing if for no reason other than the fact that it will slag enemies for you
my favorite was Moze and Krieg. Moze had this build where the more you killed the more max shield capacity and the faster the shield would regen it was fkn nuts getting some 1million+ shield value but you had to pair it with little bear which I was not a fan of. Krieg on the other hand had this build where you were just invincible straight up nothing could kill you, your health dropped and you'd pop your ult and transform into some huge psycho with a over developed arm like something out of family guy, you'd throw your axe and get all your health back and it did explosive damage
My fav capstones: Bloodsplosion (broken) Gemini (two turrets/ nukes is super fun with quick swap slagga) Death Bl0ss0m (enables crazy damage and deception chains) Wrath of the goddess (easy broken maelstrom stacking) Livin near the edge (huge fire rate/reload buff and pirate ship is insane) Double barrel (giving clone broken guns and watching him clear rooms never gets old) Avatar (action skill always up)
Couple things about thoughtlock, it adds 4 seconds to phase lock so it's 9 seconds at base more if you use suspension, it also enables wreck and kinetic reflection for up to 12 seconds with investment. Also, the additional cooldown time is glitches I'm pretty sure and doesn't actually apply. 12 seconds of up to 120% bonus fire rate with aggro relief should not be slept on, sure you have to give up one of the others but with a slap grenade that doesn't really matter. And let's be honest, what other type of grenade are you using with maya
Moze's Short Fuse capstone is just unfair. "Hey! You know how Moze does really high damage and has infinite ammo? Well, what if we give her even more damage and make it so all of her shots have a chance to cause splash damage?"
Tbf Amara has a fun build when you use her purple tree capstone with a melee build, a face puncher, a white elephant, and an ice breaker relic. Trigger with 1 kill and your face puncher shoots seemingly sticky ice grenades. And i think also in the purple tree theres a skill that allows melee attacks to cause aoe explosions so every trigger pull on a face puncher makes it look like blue fireworks with many pellets worth of ice novas lol.
The purple tree is actually stupidly strong for pet builds. I run it with radiation builds in M11 and it shreds everything. Bosses and mobs don't stand a chance. People don't like change
I think there should be a Top 10 Best Capstones and a Top 10 Most Fun Capstones Because while Krieg’s mutant form doesn’t crack top 10 in strength, it is my favorite of the franchise
We can’t talk Capstones without mentioning Bloodsplosion on Krieg, the skill alone lets him single handedly run through and slaughter challenges that are meant to take four people to complete. One well timed swing can melt guys like Pyro Pete or Hyperius down to 0, and it’s just so much fun hearing all of the explosions go off simultaneously along with the simultaneous shriek of all the monsters that just ate it.
I love Moze's Shield of Retribution, but the best way to make use of that tree is with the Deathless+Bloodletter combo, making the capstone skill absolutely useless.
Bruh... My most fun Fl4k build is a purple tree build. Check out TermX's guide, I modified it quite a bit, but that's the base of it. I certainly agree the purple capstone is underwhelming on its own, but with a CMDL3T com, you get the capstone AGAIN! Sure, it lacks the outright damage of other VHs (about on par for bossing with a phasezerker Amara), but it makes you utterly invincible with over 1m shield and just shooting heals your shield (by the passive crits, you don't even have to aim for the head, though if you are a good critter, obviously that's even more effective. It's a pretty gear dependant build, I'm currently running it with a 2xturtle, 1xcapacity Infernal wish for about 800k shield which is the sweet spot imo, combined with urad anoints and a snowdrift deathless (with 28% rad damage as well other great stats), the damage is not great, but respectable (I can do true trials without cheesing, but it's not quick. It turns FL4Ks weakness (squishiness) into his greatest strength, and sacrifices about 30% overall damage. Spoiler - try a Lob with this purple tree/cmdl3t/infernal wish/deathless/urad build. If you want the save file I'll join the discord and pass it along. ;) Bottom line, any capstone you can make an effective 'true raid' build around, can't be the number 1 worst in the game. :P
The sole utility of HIGH FIVES GUYS i’ve ever seen was in a video of a four person claptrap challenge run where it was solely taken so they could hit the nae nae on enemies’ corpses
The nuke turret was pretty good for a time. Since you can immediately cancel the turret and remove a ton of the timer again. So I would use it as a giant ass grenade.
the first good capstones that come to mind when talking about good is Bloodsplosion, Megavore, Short fuse, Death bl0ssom, Critical ascention, Double barrel and zanes blue tree which I forgot the name of
I'll actually disagree with 'High Five Guys!' being quite far along in the list. I've always felt that as a capstone, it's a little different from most others in that rather than being a really strong benefit you see very often, it's a very strong and very specific benefit that you can apply when it matters most, and that is right before a boss. Most bosses in TPS had at least a very small downtime window before you engage them, or at the start of the fight. And in multiplayer, that is a perfect time to acquire a 15% bonus to your damage and fire rate. And there's not actually a ton of ways to get raw % damage bonuses, so one that is almost completely free is more than welcome. So it's just a skill that isn't always present, but if you deploy it at the right times, you really do feel the difference, and it's very easy to apply. In multi-player, at least, which does limit it's usefulness, but I still feel that that's a valid niche. I don't know, maybe it's rose-tinted goggles, I feel like Claptrap is very underrated in TPS. QOTD: for best skills, it's not for a great reason, but I'll actually submit Axton's 'Double Up'. Because slag is pretty much mandatory in BL2's endgame, any skill that gives it to you basically for free is extremely valuable. And I just found it so helpful in eliminating any downtime from Axton's gameplay loop. No swapping weapons, no need to use a slag grenade (can use the Quasar or even a transfusion grenade instead,) even applies to bosses. It just made Axton much more fun to play at any given point in the playthrough.
I run green + blue skill trees one-shot FL4K build with three shots Fade Away and some really powerful launchers. The fundamental idea is "what if we keep St4ckbot class mod stacks at +495% damage by just not shooting between Fade Aways and stack as much cooldown speed as possible". It works surprisingly well, i can beat True Guardian Takedown M10 solo with this build. Since you can't shoot for several seconds while Fade Away is cooling down, Dominance comes in handy from time to time as a self-defence tool. Blue tree has a lot of bonuses to damage and tankiness of both pet and FL4K while orange capstone isn't really needed if you never use high RoF / high pellet count weapons. Aurelia's red tree being co-op oriented doesn't make it a waste of points. If you have a friend to play the game with, the potential max bonuses to Aurelia and servant combined make these skills some of the most powerful skills in the game. Ability to knock back your enemies and slightly buff whole team's movement and reload speed for 12s is a nice addition for a sniper-support class which is Aurelia's role. If you play solo, why even pick Aurelia? And btw, you can go through her red tree picking skills that work in solo game, there are several of them in that tree. They are weaker but still offer decent buffs for damage stats.
im going to be 100% honest here: I spec'd purple tree cuz I saw "war loader" and I thought i was gonna get a BL2 style war loader. I like mecha so i still kept using it anyway as Flak isnt my main, but damn.
I only use Fl4k's purple tree to make my Nurse Fl4k and I still don't go all the way to the capstone. My pet gets all the kills with this build on M11 while I use gear you would almost certainly never use, and it is hilarious. (Also, Teammates like me). Action Skill: Gamma Burst with Atomic Aroma and Endurance Pet: Horned Skag Green: 5 Self Repairing System = 30% Max Health/1.5% Health Regen 3 Sic Em = 30% Attack Command Dmg/30% Attack Command CD 4 Eager to Impress = 2S Action Skill CD on Pet Kill and auto reset of Attack Command 3 All My BFFs = Share half my health regen with allies and all regen with Pet (note all my health regen as we go). 3 Turn Tail and Run = 0.9% Health regen/21% Dmg Red while moving and some while standing-still bonuses I don't care about. 3 Fast and the Furryous = While >50% Health; 30% Pet Dmg/10% Move Spd. Blue: 5 Ferocity = 50% Pet Dmg 3 Persistent Hunter = 45% Action Skill Duration 5 Go for the Eyes = 75% Pet Crit Dmg and 1st Melee attack by pet on each enemy is guaranteed crit. (Horned Skag attack command is a melee atk). 5 Who Rescued Who = 2% Health Regen for 5 sec after pet deals dmg (combine with He Bites for constant Health Regen). 1 He Bites = Pet reflects 5% dmg (Only picked to proc Who Rescued Who) 1 Psycho Head on a Stick = 12% Pet move spd/20% Pet dmg kill skill 1 Mutated Defenses = Pet dropping to critical health level causes it to gain 30% dmg res/6.7% Health Regen for 6 sec. 3 Pack Tactics = 15% Max Health for Fl4k and Pet/21% Dmg for Fl4k and Pet Orange: Nothing. SHOCKING I know. Purple: 5 Gotta Go Fast = 35% Pet Dmg/40% Pet Move spd (with Psycho Head, this lets the Horned Skag zip around and catch enemies easily) 5 Agility Training = 40% Reload Speed for Fl4k and Pet (Just to move down tree but still useful). 1 Combat Veterinarian = 30% of dmg dealt goes to healing for Pet. 3 Throat Ripper = 15% for Pet to Crit (Megavore for Pet). 1 Take This = Pet Gets Copy of Fl4k's Shield (Absolutely Critical for the Build) 5 Monkey Do = Pet gets 70% more crit dmg, among other stuff (combined with Throat Ripper and Go For the Eyes deals a lot of dmg) 5 Not Even a Challenge = Stacking 35% Skill Duration and Cooldown for each Pet kill, 10 Stacks max (Always have Gamma Burst up) Notice absolutely no Capstones needed. Gear: The Res (you heard me), Hive, EM-P5 (For Running Fast), and Guardian 4N631. (Gamma Burst Active Rad Dmg Anoint on everything) King Arthur's Holy Grail (I promise, I'm still not joking) = 30% Max Health/3% Health Regen AND Reviving an Ally gives both Fl4k and the Ally 50% Wpn Dmg/33% Move Spd/AND 10% Health Regen for a full minute. (Pet counts as an ally if you revive it, which you can do with The Res BTW, plus your teammates if you want to). Red Fang so Enemies ignore me. Grenade doesn't matter, I use The Piss grenade to soften up enemies for the Pet. Brawler Ward Shield = 2% Health Regen Shielded/4% Health Regen un-shielded/300% Roid Dmg on Melee while broken (Remember, the pet is also wearing this shield, and the Horned Skag is almost exclusively Melee; and his Shield will always be depleted so 300% more Pet dmg that stacks with other dmg from the skill trees and scales with Mayhem) On average, my Fl4k has 9.4% Max Health Regen/sec with 75% more Max Health (up to 21.4% with shield depleted and Holy Grail active; and this doesn't include passive roles on class mod). This is shared with Pet and Allies keeping both alive fairly well. If anyone goes down, I shoot with the Res and activate Holy Grail. The Pet is near immortal even with Gamma Burst down because of all the shared health regen, and the only time I ever see him go down is in Mayhem Water when Gamma Burst is over, but I just shoot Pet with The Res and watch it zoom around with the Move Spd from the Holy Grail. You kill things by using the Attack Command for the Horned Skag. It is a Melee Charge so it auto crits from Go For The Eyes (If it is the first attack on that enemy) and the build has massive pet dmg bonuses and the 300% from the Brawler Ward Shield; and the dmg bonus from holding the Guardian 4N631. The Attack Command auto resets its cooldown if Pet kills an enemy, so you can spam it. On the occasions that the Horned Skag can't hit the enemies, switch to War Loader with Messy Breakup Shield (or fire an 86% amped Hive shot from the other effect of Monkey Do, then switch to the 4N631 before the Hive ball starts firing).
While he's not my favorite character to play in the Pre-Sequel, I have to shoutout The Doppelganger's Leadership capstone. Giving him all of his kill skills on a controllable trigger was absolutely phenomenal.
Mordecai's Tresspass is the best Capstone from the OG game imo since they made it into a quest reward. The Animal rights quest rewards you with the Infiltrator which ignores enemies shields which gives you a sneaky strategy for some Raid Bosses iirc.
All of the dazed skills in bl1 I never touched. The way I interpreted them was that they only had a chance to daze enemies if they were exactly the same LVL as me. Since I didn't all the side quests etc as I went through the game I was a higher level than a good amount of areas, and once you reach playthrough 2.5 everything's always higher than the player level. Never felt useful, didn't even bother investing into em
Gonna have to disagree about Trespassrt. Yeah it doesnt do much against Bandits, creatures or Lance... but ut trivializes Eridians since they are mostly shield and since with full level you ignore shields altogether ...
Sal's Overkill capstone is just broken, especially when paired with moneyshot. Killing pyro pete's spiderants with a world burn to get overkill, then using a buffed up sandhawk-grog-ladyfist combo on him feels so good man.
The best capstone is Maya's Ruin. On paper it doesn't look amazing but it makes gameplay feel so much smoother. That automatic slag on enemies is a privilege and I notice myself missing it when I'm playing other characters.
This got me thinking. Wouldn't it be a good idea to make a list of top 10 (or 15 considering how many candidates there are) non-capstone skills that are way stronger than capstones?
Hi, person that plays and simps hard for Presequel skill trees being the funnest in the franchise, for best capstones I have to mention One for Each of Ya for basically giving Nisha permanent Gunzerking on pistols and Unchained for mobbing. I also have to include my main Fragtraps capstone Livin Near the Edge mostly for the Pirate Ship Mode dealing great damage
For favorite capstones, Borderlands 2: Axton's Gemini. I tend to play solo, so having an extra sentry to deploy is appreciated. It's probably on the same level as Double Up, giving your sentry an extra turret and slag bullets, but to each their own, I just like Gemini. Borderlands Pre: Athena's Wrath of the Goddess. This is more of an honorable mention to me since it's more for the tree itself instead of Wrath of the Goddess alone that I like. It invokes fun memories of me and my brother, me pulling out my shield, him hitting me with a rocket launcher that dealt every damage, instantly charging my shield with all elements, then launching it at a horde. Borderlands 3: Moze's Short Fuse. It literally turns any weapon you hold into a Torgue weapon, what's not to love? Just slap on a gun with high RPM like an assault rifle or machine gun and the explosions will roll on in.
I know iron cub isn’t the most efficient but for me having cub run around and haymaker kneecaps with the power fists will always be funny. Love seeing him disappear behind cover with an enemy and a random blood explosion follows XD
On krieg, everyone talks about bloodsplosion but don't give release the beast the love it deserves, not only does it increase melee but a big jump in damage resistance, along with being able to chain your ults is a massive bonus
Bloodsplosion is definitely my favourite capstone. Some other capstone skills might be more game changing depending on context, but the immediate impact on your playthrough once you click that skill and for the sheer fun of seeing a chain reaction of explosions that clears an entire room? Bloodsplosion all the way!
I always liked Maya's thoughtlock mixed with ruin just so that I could group a lot of enemies, slag, corrode them all, electrocute them all, and when one died it would tag another and another all while a bunch of enemies are helping you kill the one that was controlled.
For best capstone I can't help but love Krieg's Bloodsplosion. It's powerful, and it can really change the dynamic of the game once you have it (Pyro Pete who)
Best Capstones: Double up and Gemini for Axton, Bloosplosion and Release the Beast for Krieg, Ruin for Maya, Megavore for FL4K, Short Fuse for Moze, and Double Barrel for Zane
I feel like Hades shakles could of also made the list but other than that I highly agree with it.
For best in no order
1. Leadership is one of my all time favorite capstone's because it's simple but does so much.
2. Ruin for auto slag and you are phaselocking anyway
3. One for Each of Ya
4 to 6, All 3 of zeros
7. Bloodsplosion
8. Avatar
9. Death follows close
10. Short fuse
@derchlands dude your skill tree videos is some of my favorite borderlands videos on TH-cam
Yooo! Derch, I love your videos! When farming xp or a rare item on bl2 I love listening to your character breakdowns or good, bad, and ugly videos
That's weird! I just started watching a derch video yesterday showcasing doppelganger skills, welcome back to BL's, I remember you being my plug for bl2 knowledge back in the hayday 🎉🎉
I don't see Hades Shackles as Capstone Worthy, but it does all the stuff for Maelstorm stacks. Only if the Nova scaled from Grenades damage did better.
@@kvetoslavzeleny1764 it's not terrible but it's also a weak part of the tree you don't really use
Having a class mod that specs into a capstone is wild.
Also I did go all spec into purple tree once. Holy shit fl4k couldn’t kill shit. The badass loader pet on the other hand melted everything
I wish they did this with legendary class mods. Just one point in another capstone. It would be silly.
@@Junkmeister yeah the loaderbot becomes raid boss 9000 if you spec that tree, and it copies your grenades i think or something, some interaction makes its grenades do literal billions of damage for some reason
This was just normal in BL1, because Capstones weren't just 1 skill point power houses, and skills as a whole in BL1 were pretty mediocre.
@@stephenlewis6922 they did do that for Zane. His spy class mod from arms race can add the purple capstone. I like getting his blue and orange capstones and putting the remaining points into purple, so it almost feels like having 3 full trees (minus eraser, which i want)
Having Zane's Clone getting a clone of the one gun you had when you summoned it is probably if not the best capstone, then definitely ONE of the best!
Yes! I love that capstone the most.
I have to agree. Zane has two of the best Capstone's in BL3 with Double Barrel being #1 and Death Follows Close being #2. The synergy of these capstones with both these trees is OP, and I'm here for it. My boyo has come a long way.
Infinite Rocket Launcher ammo.
Sandhawk clone combo got me so far it was the first character I cleared everything with.
The true moral of this video is that the BL3 purple skill trees were NOT worth the loss of extra playable characters 😂
Has that been stated anywhere? That the devs decided to make those tress instead of a new VH? Also Kronii x Mumei for life!
@@bakomusha Yes it was said by the devs. They said there wasn’t gonna be extra vault hunters in the games dlc packs because they wanted to instead focus on expanding the build options for the 4 default characters instead, which was the purple trees that got added.
It’s a lot more work to add new animations voice acting interactions with weapons and new mechanics extra. They took the easy route to add more late game content. Can’t say until borderlands4 comes out to see if the slaking was because of this project I hope.
Losing the dlc vault hunters was such a buzzkill for 3 it should’ve been taken as the omen it was
@@KayQue404 Fs
I loved Mordecai’s Trespass ability when maxed out: 100% chance to bypass shields combined with a sniper rifle that did fire damage…I had fun
Hear me out but the Phoenix capstone for Lilith is insane. With a Specialist Class Mod and a Fire Relic, you walk next to enemies and they die. Playing with my mate in the General Knoxx DLC, I managed to clear out 90% of the enemies, including the cars just by Phasewalking. Badass enemies didn’t last 2 seconds. Watching the health bars literally disappear in seconds by simply standing next to them is possibly the most fun thing I’ve experienced in Borderlands.
The Phoenix is super powerful in combat but it always feels like there's so many barrels that explode right on top of you the second you get within range
Lilith is just a really good character.
I never was impressed with Roland. He's got decent stat boosting skills but his support skills always underperformed.
The shield on the turret was useless as it barely reached chest high while crouched. It also went away as soon as Roland went down so the turrets revival skill couldn't actually be used to revive yourself. Axton in BL2 is just a better designed Roland.
Brick is only usable if you're doing an explosives build. His other trees are good early game but fall off pretty quickly and are just bad late game.
Mordecai just does a lot of damage.
As a Krieg player, Bloodsplosion is easily a top 10 capstone. That says a lot, considering RtB makes melee astonishingly powerful at OP10. Bloodsplosion just has it all:
It can work with melee builds!
It can work with gun builds!
It can work with fire builds!
It can work with hybrid builds!
IT CAN ONE SHOT RAID BOSSES!!! (Pete is easy, but I’ve seen people bloodsplode Vora, Dragons, and maybe even Vermi).
Krieg has two of the all time best capstones.
Can one shot and can one shot reliably are two different things. Pyro Pete sure, but Vora and Dragons are way more RNG dependent cause they move so much.
That’s fair. But he CAN do it, and it’s dope.
Krieg's least good capstone is still really strong, passively spreading the fire debuff to stack up or maintain his Hellborn self-burn buffs is incredible for enabling non-ele proc weapons on the character
@@QuantemDeconstructor Krieg has, quite possibly, the best set of capstones of any Vault Hunter.
Axtons “double up” skill is my fav capstone, gives him a second barrel on his turret and both shoot slag, its an absolute game changer for UVHM, especially when combined with “mag lock”and “longbow turret” makes you able to slag enemies from any angle without swapping weapons, you Can even combine it with the “gemeni” capstone in his survival tree for two turrets.
Double up has SAVED my UVHM runs by just having slag. It makes so many fights hecka easier
@@Salty_Pistachios it totally does make alot of fights easier. on my current UVHM run its the only form of slag present in my build and im getting through my play through pretty effortlessly.
I've heard people say Axton is bad for UVHM, though. They all say Maya is better, and Salvador is the best.
i have been an axton main since the game released, and have leveled him to every op level.
He is very balanced and capable even against raid bosses, outclasses even maya against some as far as speed of kills. Salvador although, is way more powerful, he and krieg are borderline invincible with the right build.
Axton mainly has some really solid gun damage handling and movement speed bonuses that make great balanced builds, also his grenade damage buff plus increased grenade capacity and rocket damage compared to other characters actually make him very viable for explosive builds.
People in the community used to say he was underpowered, because he is a jack of all trades master of none type class, but he has seen more popularity recently ive noticed.
he is the easiest to learn hardest to master as far as bl2 vault hunters go, that and his funny dialogue are why hes my fav
Kriegs has no bad capstones
Moze's short fuse in the demolition woman tree, also Nisha's capstone that let's her duel wield whatever pistol she's already using.
This.
nisha with double luck cannon is pretty fun
I use the purple tree for flak so my pet gets a copy of my shield. A nova shield is fun for this.
Fl4k's purple tree focusing on survivability just seems anathema to Fl4k's expertise in being both a glass cannon alongside aggro management; Their pet can already revive them partway through the green tree for a single point, so more survivability just feels redundant like with Running on Fumes, since Fl4k doesn't really need the extra survivability, their pet is hearty enough that when holding aggro, Fl4k can already be ignored by enemies.
Yeah, and you gotta pay for the purple trees xD. Honestly it wouldn't be that bad if it was base stuff but they made us pay for that crap
@@BearWith_You and BL2 made you pay for literally EVERYTHING aside from the Lilith DLC..... it's almost like companies need money to keep making games, or something like that
@@captainspaulding5963 Its like maybe if you're gonna pay for something extra ontop of the cake it should be gold not shit
You go from glass cannon to an unstoppable force and lose maybe 20% total damage loss for Fl4k themselves but your pet is literally the strongest its ever been
@@504godzilla Well sure, but if I wanted to play Moze, I'd just play Moze instead.
Any skill that gives you slag is a top 10 for me. Reducing the headache of switching guns nonstop is too good to pass up.
Laughs in "give pet a copy of your shield"..... granted, that doesn't make up for the rest of the tree being pretty terrible, but if you set it up correctly, purple tree can do some serious work with Fl4k
Revolter shield with ion loader can be god mode just from that one skill
@@cjbrown5359 Faulty star is peak. With mayhem scaling, it does so much damage. +it compliments the other skill that reflects pet damage.
The shield that spawns a drone (messy breakup IIRC) was pretty fun on a pet build, although it did leave my Fl4k very vulnerable to damage 😂
Any nova shields were great. Been a while but resetting nova shields was why I liked flaks purple tree also loader uses your gernades
If you don't play on op. 10, with claws with melee Gaige build is pretty good for mobbing.
Fibber and bee with blood soaked shields are super easy to get and much better though.
I usually go the melee route with Gaige on the first normal playthrough but GOD the "SNICK SNICK BUB!" Gets incredibly annoying.
I'm a Gaige main myself and honestly I agree with K6. I used it alot and it just felt worse and worse each time I used it. Not only does it cost Anarchy stacks but it just means one less shotgun blast wich I would much rather be doing. Gaige is built for close range AoE hit and run. Not firing your gun means less ricochets, less blood soaked shield procs, and less Anarchy stacking. A Jakobs shotgun with a magazine of 1 will always out preform With Claws, I only use it as an extra heal when things are getting dicey.
I had a lot of fun with melee gaige using a bladed nozzle and flame of the firehawk shield in uvhm.
@caosisaac The Black Hole is also really solid on Gaige, and it's a shock shield so it interacts better with Little Big Trouble.
Before they made the great and logical decision to swap its position with Death Follows Close, Zane's "Seein' Red" was one of the best capstones in the game. It was the whole reason you worked your way down his Blue skill tree in the early BL3 days as it meant a huge power spike for him (at least until the "Seein' Dead" class mod was introduced).
Wait until this guy finds out about the seein’ dead class mod 💀
An honorable mention for terrible capstones is distributed denial. It's no longer the capstone in Zane's undercover tree, but it barely worked at all in the early days of the game (and still doesn't work as a tier 3 tree)
I always wondered if Axton's nuke was supposed to deal explosive damage & set people on fire like a nuclear flash would do.
I use the nuke to stun enemies.
Having a nuclear skill in the game before radiation became an element should be criminal, like being Axton back so he can do a huge rad AoE
I wonder if the nukem was supposed to be explosive and fire. Honestly missed opportunity to have this in some form of unique or even as a skill for axton to have a chance for explosive dmg he deals to also deal fire dmg and burn DOT.
But it literally does do explosive damage and set people on fire, even in every clip he put in shows it doing explosive damage and then a fire dot! Am I crazy or something???
@CorruptSaberz no, he was just wrong, however the dmg is indeed not really good.
Hmm, ten best capstones... I'd have to say, in no particular order:
Megavore (20% crit chance on every shot no matter where it hits is insanely good, especially for the glass cannon that is FL4K)
Double Barrel (giving Zane's clone a dupe of your gun is just kinda broken when the clone doesn't need to reload)
Wrath of the Goddess (okay maybe not the best capstone in terms of function but playing Athena like she's Captain America is just so much fun)
Promote the Ranks (similar to Double Barrel, having Jack clones is already a godsend and having a badass clone is even moreso)
One For Each of Ya (giving Nisha a second copy of her pistol basically makes her a pseudo-Salvador, and we all know how broken Salvador could be)
Come At Me Bro (a health restore and damage reduction is already fantastic on its own, and the taunt for drawing aggro is always going to be a handy trick in co-op. Plus Salvador flips the bird to activate it and that's hilarious)
No Kill Like Overkill (the excess damage added to Salvador's weapons just creates a snowball effect of stacking excess damage to bowl over everything in Sal's way)
Double Up (Axton getting a second turret is nice, but the turrets now dealing Slag damage makes this skill invaluable simply for allowing Axton to slag enemies without having to swap weapons)
Ruin (again, allowing a BL2 character to inflict slag without swapping weapons is golden. This could have also been Scorn, but I went with Ruin since I feel Maya is less likely to be throwing around a lot of melee attacks, though mayhaps it's the better skill for bosses)
Death Bl0ss0m (being able to apply Zer0's death mark from range is incredibly useful in all contexts, especially since death mark doesn't just apply to Zero's damage but also his allies')
And as an honorable mention I'd like to point towards Lilith's Phoenix from BL1, since while most capstones are just meh in that game, Phoenix's double whammy of not consuming ammo and causing fire around Lilith is pretty potent. Phase Strike is also pretty good from the sheer damage multiplier (800%!!!), but a bit more situational since it's melee-out-of-phasewalk only.
Good answers
No krieg capstone all of his are busted
I ran a ThoughtLock buiid with Maya and loved it, reason being I usually killed the Toughtlocked enemy first, let the process transfer to another enemy and then the next. Depending on how many enemy were around I could keep a crowd off of me and at a distance as well. As for the best capstone, Krieg's release the Beast, Zero's Critical Ascension and Salvador's No Kill Like Overkill are all great IMO.
I remember when Zane's capstone got swapped. I hada redo my entire build to get it back. Thats how you know it was a good skill worthy of being a capstone
I wasn't a fan of that change, personally. Having his now-capstone at the middle of the tree made that tree perfect, since you didn't have to spec all the way up but still gave you the option to go further to get some solid skills that were pre-capstone. Making it the capstone instead just makes it less worthwhile because of the mandatory extra point investment.
@reddragonpress The whole point of the change is Death Follows Close is too good that they force you to get other things before getting it now, severely nerfing Zane overall. If you got just Death Follows Close you can then allocate those points elsewhere, making him stronger in the process
@@BearWith_You Oh, I was talking about Zane's green tree 🤣 For some reason I didn't realize you were talking about his blue tree, which *also* got the capstone swapped.
Nisha's "one for each of ya" and "the unforgiven" for best cap skills, I have an MC'ing FL4K and it's really sad even with an MC'ing class mod, grenade, blue cap skill and the purple tree action skill MC augment.
My absolute favorite capstone has got to be bloodsplosion. It's probably my all time favorite skill in borderlands and the sound of a bloodsplosion chain breaking the audio makes my brain happy. In general I think Kreig has a bunch of useful capstones, they all fit well and feel pretty impactful. Though his fireball capstone is not flashy, it is very good for maintaining flame stacks if you are doing other elemental damage types. such as running through a loader area with a corrosive kitten.
Before Mayhem existed I would have said Amara green capstone. Turning the entire map into a giant game of pinball where the ball is actually a wrecking ball is an insane amount of fun. It was the most fun I had before Spirit Driver existed
What I love about Axtons Nuke Skill basically being neutered by doing FIRE Damage, is that they did the EXACT SAME THING to Claptraps "Hyperion Punch" Skill, which, as mods show, would actually have been a decently powerful Melee override for him if they made it deal explosion damage instead.
Because that makes sense, give him a Skill Tree all about blowing stuff up and then make the one Skill thats actually not a passive deal FIRE Damage.
Many Must Fall is soooo much fun in a first playthrough but then falls off a cliff at TVH and higher. Death Bl0ss0m will always be a favorite thanks to marking multiple enemies and being a source of slag in UVH.
7:08 axton doesn’t actually have any explosive damage increases, just grenade damage and rocket launcher damage bonuses
In all fairness a really deceptive amount of explosive damage sources are tagged as "grenades"
@@QuantemDeconstructor Yeah BL2 was a mess of Damage Type Classification. Making you have to do a shit ton of research for more Obscure Weapon and Gear Usage.
@@QuantemDeconstructor Yes, but not all grenade damage is explosive. There are tons of Maliwan weapons that deal splash damage too.
@@dr.dylansgame5583 I'm glad that BL3 do this "splash damage" blanket classification.
Now what constitutes as splash damage or not is another matter entirely.
@@theobell2002 True, forgot about that! "Grenade damage" has got to be the most deceptive stat in the series
The Trespass skill is amazing against the Eridian enemies, but most enemies in Borderlands 1 just don't have big shields, it would've been amazing in the sequels.
Most of these picks are fine, but Clear the Mind is phenomenal. Even if you are stacking all 5 elements on Amara (which you probably would be), against an Armoured enemy. You're losing Half your fire damage, half your radiation damage and 35% of your shock damage, unless you're specced into Clear the Mind, then all those elements do 100% of their damage against all of the different health bars, Clear the Mind gives Amara WAY more damage, in every situation, with the only real downside being that it's in the purple tree.
sure, but you could just swap weapons instead of wasting 20 points of investment
@axxjazz. I'm not saying it's worth investing into, but calling it bad is just not right. It doesn't matter, on Amara you'll be doing all 5 element all the time, so this skill makes the less effective of the 2 elements and makes them stronger
I actually love that Fl4K skill that doubles your Shield. That carried me a lot on insanely hard fights (+ the shield heals) and having the modifier that gives a point in it now the shield gets tripled
Moses purple tree capstone is actually really good
The fact that I could run from the start of the guardian takedown to halfway through without iron bear running out time is ridiculous
Yeah but you can literally get Iron Bear back instantly most of the time as is.
@@Ki11ersix I gotcha I gotcha 😊 I was running full iron bear mode that's why I mentioned it
It was funny to see iron bear decimate everything 😂
I remember day 1 it was used as FFYL saver now it's useful
I’d have to say Athena’s Wrath of the Goddess Capstone of her Green tree was pretty fun to use while also being useful for mobbing.
Pre nerf cloudkill should definitely get an honorable mention.
For some likely less mentioned capstones, I recall Wonderlands having really good ones. Especially graveborn and spell slinger.
Fl4k's skill that lets a pet revive you feels like a capstone by itself, the pet immediately starts reviving you. I've gone down so many times in a row that the timer decrease that gives you less time in fight for your life each time you go down just gave up, there's almost zero threat of dying with that skill. Between that and the healing effect skill of his ability to grow his pet makes me wonder why a "survivabilty" skill tree even exists
Hmmm. One that sounds a bit obvious but I'm going to say it anyway, Zer0's Kunai/Death Blossom. Very useful regardless of the build you use for Zer0 and it also gives you an option of slag so you don't have to shoot to slag a target and also of course the fact that it debuffs the enemy is the cherry on top. Even after Gearbox kept nerfing it over and over again, it didn't stop people from taking it because it's so crucial.
High Fives Guys maybe shouldn't be a capstone but it's hilarious running up to enemies with your hand up and getting 50% fire rate, 15% gun damage and 3% health regen while taking no damage from the hit.
It's a pretty great capstone for the tree itt's in, which focuses on teamplay. you revive an ally with 02 since clap doesn't need it, pop highfive, they melee on get up, instant buffs. you can pop it before and during boss fights as well. Like sure, it isnt the best if you're playing solo like he is... but it clearly wasnt meant for solo.
I had a feeling Axton's Nuke would've been here, it's actually taken my brother as Krieg a few times
Even as someone who hasn't played BL2 in forever, i can tell you that critical ascension and bloodsplosion are making the best list
Yep
Yep
Yep
Yep
Bloodsplosion isn't even that good. It's just an AoE attack with immense versatility and damage potential that stacks with just about every Kreig build and can humilate the Pyro Pete raid boss. Complete trash
8:24 I'm quite curious why you threw trespass into the mix here. I've used it on many builds and it's always worked wonders for me.
Shout out to Zane's Distributed Denial which launched as a capstone skill and did not work properly. I haven't played BL3 in years but last time I checked it only worked with maybe 2 shield types.
Axton's Gemini is insane because you basically become invincible since mobs will target your turrets almost exclusively, and when you pair it with double up you basically never have to slag enemies yourself!
Moze's Short Fuse is crazy good when paired with Means of Destruction from earlier in the same tree, Demolition Woman. Your capstone turns most shots into an aoe while the skill adds a chance to regen ammo and grenades when dealing aoe damage. Great synergy.
The pre sequel had a huge issue with the co-op skills, with Aurelia being the worst (in my opinion). I didn't pick it up until there was basically no one to co-op with so that skill tree was a write-off from day one.
Dude, Dominace is very useful when heavy mobbing. It's basically an on effect Red Fang taunt centered on the affected enemy. You trigger it constantly with aimed shot crits. Works the same as Mesmer. It's awesome for crowd control and creating breathing room on Fade Away cooldowns. Very useful for Maliwan Takedown and any place with mob density like Slaughter Shaft, etc.
Saying its the same as an easy to obtain grenade kinds proves my point though, doesn't it?
Or you can get peregrine a good grenade and press the action skill button on your keyboard and watch everything die before the effect of dominance could run out.
@@Ki11ersix Tho having it as a skill allows you to use grenade slot for something more powerful like Hunter Seeker (which can also trigger Dominance on top of a bunch of other skills).
Critical Ascension and Scorn are disgusting. Avatar for Amara is nasty, too. Proc your action skill twice while it's on cooldown? Yes please
Honestly, I think you could make a case for Zero's Death Blossom to be pretty high on a list of "best capstones" in Borderlands. Not only does it apply Death Mark, but it also pretty consistently applies slag, which is really the main selling point here. You're just stacking damage multipliers at that point. That's not to say that the other elemental damage effects aren't nice, but having a free "slag enemy" button is pretty strong. Some people will still run a Grog Nozzle on Zero after taking Death Blossom, but I really don't recommend it because Death Blossom is just that consistent.
Looking at the nuke footage it does seem like the nuke does "some" explosive damage before tapering off into fire damage as if to try and simulate the fallout of a nuclear blast however it appears to be only 2 ticks of it, one when the nuke goes off and another as the enemies around it are pushed back via the nuke shockwave/force.
High Five is actually interesting, but would be a lot better if it could avoid the damage that triggers it when it comes from enemies. It would feel more like a capstone.
As an Axton main I totally agree with you. The nuke needs a buff, and I felt like in uvhm was when it sucked the most good list.
Personally, I'd put Zane's Confident Competence on the top of this list.
It actually used to be his middle of the green tree perk with Dustributed Denial being the capstone, but that got swapped around.
And for a capstone, up to 35% Gun damage and 50% Accuracy are just outstandingly poor. Even aside from the Gun damage absurdity that is Violent Momentum, Zane can get 40% gun damage from literally the first skill in his orange tree and another 30 from the second row in orange. Commitment is another 40% if you want it.
You can also get infinitely more accuracy from Man of Focus in the purple tree, even if it's more conditional.
Even if they just straight-up turned 35% Gun damage into 350% Gun damage, it would have been a dubious capstone, but at least it might have been worth picking for builds that don't wanna invest into the blue tree at all.
As for the best:
I'd say Double Barrel is pretty high, that skill can basically play the game for you with the right equipment. Death Bl0ss0m also is really great since it applies Death mark and actually deals quite respectable damage on its own. Double up is great because it just applies so much slag over an extended period of time.
Moze's capstone skill in her blue tree. It basically turns all kinds of weapons into splash weapons. And since Moze boosts splash damage with her blue tree... you can do the math.
My faves in no particular order from Borderlands 2, 3 and Pre-Sequel
Kriegs bloodsplosion and release the beast. Nishas one for each of ya. Jacks leadership. Flaks megavore. Mozes short fuze. Axtons double up.
Axton's Double Up capstone singlehandedly makes UVHM so much less of a pain in the ass for mobbing if for no reason other than the fact that it will slag enemies for you
my favorite was Moze and Krieg. Moze had this build where the more you killed the more max shield capacity and the faster the shield would regen it was fkn nuts getting some 1million+ shield value but you had to pair it with little bear which I was not a fan of. Krieg on the other hand had this build where you were just invincible straight up nothing could kill you, your health dropped and you'd pop your ult and transform into some huge psycho with a over developed arm like something out of family guy, you'd throw your axe and get all your health back and it did explosive damage
My fav capstones:
Bloodsplosion (broken)
Gemini (two turrets/ nukes is super fun with quick swap slagga)
Death Bl0ss0m (enables crazy damage and deception chains)
Wrath of the goddess (easy broken maelstrom stacking)
Livin near the edge (huge fire rate/reload buff and pirate ship is insane)
Double barrel (giving clone broken guns and watching him clear rooms never gets old)
Avatar (action skill always up)
Couple things about thoughtlock, it adds 4 seconds to phase lock so it's 9 seconds at base more if you use suspension, it also enables wreck and kinetic reflection for up to 12 seconds with investment. Also, the additional cooldown time is glitches I'm pretty sure and doesn't actually apply. 12 seconds of up to 120% bonus fire rate with aggro relief should not be slept on, sure you have to give up one of the others but with a slap grenade that doesn't really matter. And let's be honest, what other type of grenade are you using with maya
Moze's Short Fuse capstone is just unfair.
"Hey! You know how Moze does really high damage and has infinite ammo? Well, what if we give her even more damage and make it so all of her shots have a chance to cause splash damage?"
Tbf Amara has a fun build when you use her purple tree capstone with a melee build, a face puncher, a white elephant, and an ice breaker relic. Trigger with 1 kill and your face puncher shoots seemingly sticky ice grenades. And i think also in the purple tree theres a skill that allows melee attacks to cause aoe explosions so every trigger pull on a face puncher makes it look like blue fireworks with many pellets worth of ice novas lol.
The purple tree is actually stupidly strong for pet builds.
I run it with radiation builds in M11 and it shreds everything. Bosses and mobs don't stand a chance.
People don't like change
I Actually Thought Axtons Nuke Skill Was Good Despite its lack of Explosive Damages Due To Its Knock Back. It Was Really Good For Mobbing
I think there should be a Top 10 Best Capstones and a Top 10 Most Fun Capstones
Because while Krieg’s mutant form doesn’t crack top 10 in strength, it is my favorite of the franchise
We can’t talk Capstones without mentioning Bloodsplosion on Krieg, the skill alone lets him single handedly run through and slaughter challenges that are meant to take four people to complete. One well timed swing can melt guys like Pyro Pete or Hyperius down to 0, and it’s just so much fun hearing all of the explosions go off simultaneously along with the simultaneous shriek of all the monsters that just ate it.
"...and Mordecai's Capstone."
😠
"Now, to be fair, Mordecai's Capstone is actually pretty nice."
...
I'll let you off with a warning this time.
I love Moze's Shield of Retribution, but the best way to make use of that tree is with the Deathless+Bloodletter combo, making the capstone skill absolutely useless.
Maya’s Ruin capstone is probably one of my favorites, that, and I just really like having Blight Phoenix.
Zane’s Sunny D capstone is also pretty good.
Bruh... My most fun Fl4k build is a purple tree build. Check out TermX's guide, I modified it quite a bit, but that's the base of it. I certainly agree the purple capstone is underwhelming on its own, but with a CMDL3T com, you get the capstone AGAIN! Sure, it lacks the outright damage of other VHs (about on par for bossing with a phasezerker Amara), but it makes you utterly invincible with over 1m shield and just shooting heals your shield (by the passive crits, you don't even have to aim for the head, though if you are a good critter, obviously that's even more effective. It's a pretty gear dependant build, I'm currently running it with a 2xturtle, 1xcapacity Infernal wish for about 800k shield which is the sweet spot imo, combined with urad anoints and a snowdrift deathless (with 28% rad damage as well other great stats), the damage is not great, but respectable (I can do true trials without cheesing, but it's not quick. It turns FL4Ks weakness (squishiness) into his greatest strength, and sacrifices about 30% overall damage. Spoiler - try a Lob with this purple tree/cmdl3t/infernal wish/deathless/urad build. If you want the save file I'll join the discord and pass it along. ;)
Bottom line, any capstone you can make an effective 'true raid' build around, can't be the number 1 worst in the game. :P
The sole utility of HIGH FIVES GUYS i’ve ever seen was in a video of a four person claptrap challenge run where it was solely taken so they could hit the nae nae on enemies’ corpses
The nuke turret was pretty good for a time. Since you can immediately cancel the turret and remove a ton of the timer again. So I would use it as a giant ass grenade.
Jack’s leadership skill just synergies so well that I feel like it should be in the top 5 best cap stones
Ive always said gaiges anarchy cap stone should have been to make dt's melee damage scale with anarchy stacks
the first good capstones that come to mind when talking about good is Bloodsplosion, Megavore, Short fuse, Death bl0ssom, Critical ascention, Double barrel and zanes blue tree which I forgot the name of
I'll actually disagree with 'High Five Guys!' being quite far along in the list. I've always felt that as a capstone, it's a little different from most others in that rather than being a really strong benefit you see very often, it's a very strong and very specific benefit that you can apply when it matters most, and that is right before a boss. Most bosses in TPS had at least a very small downtime window before you engage them, or at the start of the fight. And in multiplayer, that is a perfect time to acquire a 15% bonus to your damage and fire rate. And there's not actually a ton of ways to get raw % damage bonuses, so one that is almost completely free is more than welcome. So it's just a skill that isn't always present, but if you deploy it at the right times, you really do feel the difference, and it's very easy to apply. In multi-player, at least, which does limit it's usefulness, but I still feel that that's a valid niche. I don't know, maybe it's rose-tinted goggles, I feel like Claptrap is very underrated in TPS.
QOTD: for best skills, it's not for a great reason, but I'll actually submit Axton's 'Double Up'. Because slag is pretty much mandatory in BL2's endgame, any skill that gives it to you basically for free is extremely valuable. And I just found it so helpful in eliminating any downtime from Axton's gameplay loop. No swapping weapons, no need to use a slag grenade (can use the Quasar or even a transfusion grenade instead,) even applies to bosses. It just made Axton much more fun to play at any given point in the playthrough.
I run green + blue skill trees one-shot FL4K build with three shots Fade Away and some really powerful launchers. The fundamental idea is "what if we keep St4ckbot class mod stacks at +495% damage by just not shooting between Fade Aways and stack as much cooldown speed as possible". It works surprisingly well, i can beat True Guardian Takedown M10 solo with this build. Since you can't shoot for several seconds while Fade Away is cooling down, Dominance comes in handy from time to time as a self-defence tool. Blue tree has a lot of bonuses to damage and tankiness of both pet and FL4K while orange capstone isn't really needed if you never use high RoF / high pellet count weapons.
Aurelia's red tree being co-op oriented doesn't make it a waste of points. If you have a friend to play the game with, the potential max bonuses to Aurelia and servant combined make these skills some of the most powerful skills in the game. Ability to knock back your enemies and slightly buff whole team's movement and reload speed for 12s is a nice addition for a sniper-support class which is Aurelia's role. If you play solo, why even pick Aurelia? And btw, you can go through her red tree picking skills that work in solo game, there are several of them in that tree. They are weaker but still offer decent buffs for damage stats.
Double Barrel is just ridiculous. Clone with a Sandhawk or No Pewpew means I can go to the bathroom and make a sandwich while my clone clears the map.
Im doing my first Axton run, and learning about Nuke its good to know the skill does fire damage. I feel less bad for not going down the blue tree
im going to be 100% honest here: I spec'd purple tree cuz I saw "war loader" and I thought i was gonna get a BL2 style war loader. I like mecha so i still kept using it anyway as Flak isnt my main, but damn.
I only use Fl4k's purple tree to make my Nurse Fl4k and I still don't go all the way to the capstone. My pet gets all the kills with this build on M11 while I use gear you would almost certainly never use, and it is hilarious. (Also, Teammates like me).
Action Skill: Gamma Burst with Atomic Aroma and Endurance
Pet: Horned Skag
Green:
5 Self Repairing System = 30% Max Health/1.5% Health Regen
3 Sic Em = 30% Attack Command Dmg/30% Attack Command CD
4 Eager to Impress = 2S Action Skill CD on Pet Kill and auto reset of Attack Command
3 All My BFFs = Share half my health regen with allies and all regen with Pet (note all my health regen as we go).
3 Turn Tail and Run = 0.9% Health regen/21% Dmg Red while moving and some while standing-still bonuses I don't care about.
3 Fast and the Furryous = While >50% Health; 30% Pet Dmg/10% Move Spd.
Blue:
5 Ferocity = 50% Pet Dmg
3 Persistent Hunter = 45% Action Skill Duration
5 Go for the Eyes = 75% Pet Crit Dmg and 1st Melee attack by pet on each enemy is guaranteed crit. (Horned Skag attack command is a melee atk).
5 Who Rescued Who = 2% Health Regen for 5 sec after pet deals dmg (combine with He Bites for constant Health Regen).
1 He Bites = Pet reflects 5% dmg (Only picked to proc Who Rescued Who)
1 Psycho Head on a Stick = 12% Pet move spd/20% Pet dmg kill skill
1 Mutated Defenses = Pet dropping to critical health level causes it to gain 30% dmg res/6.7% Health Regen for 6 sec.
3 Pack Tactics = 15% Max Health for Fl4k and Pet/21% Dmg for Fl4k and Pet
Orange:
Nothing. SHOCKING I know.
Purple:
5 Gotta Go Fast = 35% Pet Dmg/40% Pet Move spd (with Psycho Head, this lets the Horned Skag zip around and catch enemies easily)
5 Agility Training = 40% Reload Speed for Fl4k and Pet (Just to move down tree but still useful).
1 Combat Veterinarian = 30% of dmg dealt goes to healing for Pet.
3 Throat Ripper = 15% for Pet to Crit (Megavore for Pet).
1 Take This = Pet Gets Copy of Fl4k's Shield (Absolutely Critical for the Build)
5 Monkey Do = Pet gets 70% more crit dmg, among other stuff (combined with Throat Ripper and Go For the Eyes deals a lot of dmg)
5 Not Even a Challenge = Stacking 35% Skill Duration and Cooldown for each Pet kill, 10 Stacks max (Always have Gamma Burst up)
Notice absolutely no Capstones needed.
Gear:
The Res (you heard me), Hive, EM-P5 (For Running Fast), and Guardian 4N631. (Gamma Burst Active Rad Dmg Anoint on everything)
King Arthur's Holy Grail (I promise, I'm still not joking) = 30% Max Health/3% Health Regen AND Reviving an Ally gives both Fl4k and the Ally 50% Wpn Dmg/33% Move Spd/AND 10% Health Regen for a full minute. (Pet counts as an ally if you revive it, which you can do with The Res BTW, plus your teammates if you want to).
Red Fang so Enemies ignore me.
Grenade doesn't matter, I use The Piss grenade to soften up enemies for the Pet.
Brawler Ward Shield = 2% Health Regen Shielded/4% Health Regen un-shielded/300% Roid Dmg on Melee while broken (Remember, the pet is also wearing this shield, and the Horned Skag is almost exclusively Melee; and his Shield will always be depleted so 300% more Pet dmg that stacks with other dmg from the skill trees and scales with Mayhem)
On average, my Fl4k has 9.4% Max Health Regen/sec with 75% more Max Health (up to 21.4% with shield depleted and Holy Grail active; and this doesn't include passive roles on class mod). This is shared with Pet and Allies keeping both alive fairly well. If anyone goes down, I shoot with the Res and activate Holy Grail. The Pet is near immortal even with Gamma Burst down because of all the shared health regen, and the only time I ever see him go down is in Mayhem Water when Gamma Burst is over, but I just shoot Pet with The Res and watch it zoom around with the Move Spd from the Holy Grail.
You kill things by using the Attack Command for the Horned Skag. It is a Melee Charge so it auto crits from Go For The Eyes (If it is the first attack on that enemy) and the build has massive pet dmg bonuses and the 300% from the Brawler Ward Shield; and the dmg bonus from holding the Guardian 4N631. The Attack Command auto resets its cooldown if Pet kills an enemy, so you can spam it. On the occasions that the Horned Skag can't hit the enemies, switch to War Loader with Messy Breakup Shield (or fire an 86% amped Hive shot from the other effect of Monkey Do, then switch to the 4N631 before the Hive ball starts firing).
While he's not my favorite character to play in the Pre-Sequel, I have to shoutout The Doppelganger's Leadership capstone. Giving him all of his kill skills on a controllable trigger was absolutely phenomenal.
The 'we ran out of ideas, hot garbage' capstones
Mordecai's Tresspass is the best Capstone from the OG game imo since they made it into a quest reward. The Animal rights quest rewards you with the Infiltrator which ignores enemies shields which gives you a sneaky strategy for some Raid Bosses iirc.
Krieg was perfect for me. To the point that I forget he's grossly overclocked to survive in the open and die in every fight as someone else 😅
All of the dazed skills in bl1 I never touched. The way I interpreted them was that they only had a chance to daze enemies if they were exactly the same LVL as me. Since I didn't all the side quests etc as I went through the game I was a higher level than a good amount of areas, and once you reach playthrough 2.5 everything's always higher than the player level. Never felt useful, didn't even bother investing into em
Gonna have to disagree about Trespassrt.
Yeah it doesnt do much against Bandits, creatures or Lance... but ut trivializes Eridians since they are mostly shield and since with full level you ignore shields altogether ...
Sal's Overkill capstone is just broken, especially when paired with moneyshot. Killing pyro pete's spiderants with a world burn to get overkill, then using a buffed up sandhawk-grog-ladyfist combo on him feels so good man.
The best capstone is Maya's Ruin. On paper it doesn't look amazing but it makes gameplay feel so much smoother. That automatic slag on enemies is a privilege and I notice myself missing it when I'm playing other characters.
This got me thinking. Wouldn't it be a good idea to make a list of top 10 (or 15 considering how many candidates there are) non-capstone skills that are way stronger than capstones?
I love this idea. Thank you!
Only go down the purple skill tree on flak for the loder bot
In terms of best cap stones id have to say Release the Beast for Kreig if you do it right you basically don't die and always have your actions skill
Zer0's Death Blossom is a must have capstone on any build and is easily a top 10 capstone skill
Only thing I’d get in Maya’s green tree is the converge skill. Pair that with ruin and *chefs kiss*
Zane’s Doubled Agent capstone is definitely making top 3 no doubt.
Hi, person that plays and simps hard for Presequel skill trees being the funnest in the franchise, for best capstones I have to mention One for Each of Ya for basically giving Nisha permanent Gunzerking on pistols and Unchained for mobbing. I also have to include my main Fragtraps capstone Livin Near the Edge mostly for the Pirate Ship Mode dealing great damage
For favorite capstones,
Borderlands 2: Axton's Gemini. I tend to play solo, so having an extra sentry to deploy is appreciated. It's probably on the same level as Double Up, giving your sentry an extra turret and slag bullets, but to each their own, I just like Gemini.
Borderlands Pre: Athena's Wrath of the Goddess. This is more of an honorable mention to me since it's more for the tree itself instead of Wrath of the Goddess alone that I like. It invokes fun memories of me and my brother, me pulling out my shield, him hitting me with a rocket launcher that dealt every damage, instantly charging my shield with all elements, then launching it at a horde.
Borderlands 3: Moze's Short Fuse. It literally turns any weapon you hold into a Torgue weapon, what's not to love? Just slap on a gun with high RPM like an assault rifle or machine gun and the explosions will roll on in.
I know iron cub isn’t the most efficient but for me having cub run around and haymaker kneecaps with the power fists will always be funny. Love seeing him disappear behind cover with an enemy and a random blood explosion follows XD
On krieg, everyone talks about bloodsplosion but don't give release the beast the love it deserves, not only does it increase melee but a big jump in damage resistance, along with being able to chain your ults is a massive bonus
Bloodsplosion is definitely my favourite capstone. Some other capstone skills might be more game changing depending on context, but the immediate impact on your playthrough once you click that skill and for the sheer fun of seeing a chain reaction of explosions that clears an entire room? Bloodsplosion all the way!
Dang hard shade on BL1 caps. Seems to me like an issue of power creep rather than underpowered caps…
I always liked Maya's thoughtlock mixed with ruin just so that I could group a lot of enemies, slag, corrode them all, electrocute them all, and when one died it would tag another and another all while a bunch of enemies are helping you kill the one that was controlled.
For best capstone I can't help but love Krieg's Bloodsplosion. It's powerful, and it can really change the dynamic of the game once you have it (Pyro Pete who)
Best Capstones: Double up and Gemini for Axton, Bloosplosion and Release the Beast for Krieg, Ruin for Maya, Megavore for FL4K, Short Fuse for Moze, and Double Barrel for Zane
Zer0’s Critical ascension and Nisha’s One For Each of Ya are super OP
@@Mrcheeseman200 is sad that the dual wield glitch got patched out for Nisha :( but still your so right