Guide to playing Axton [Level 72 OP+]

Hey guys, welcome to my guide! In this guide, I will be giving you a brief introduction on Axton, tips and tricks when playing with him, what skill tree you should put your points in and what gear you should be armed with!

Introduction

Axton is a well balanced class that can deploy a turret to help him out. His skill tree benefits both his turret and himself. You can think of him almost like a Gunzerker, who wields two guns, but instead, a gun and a turret. The weapon you use and his skill tree will affect his damage output, so be sure to choose them wisely.

Sabre Turret

The Sabre Turret has both an offensive and defensive side. The Sabre Turret can deal damage, distract and soak up damage from enemies at the same time, giving you space to shoot enemies while they are focusing the Turret. You may also hide inside its shield if you are low on health from gun fire.

The Skill Trees

This is the build I use for my level 72 Axton. This build focuses on slagging the enemies and doing some damage with your two turrets while you deal massive damage with your gun.

Skill Tree: Guerrilla

Guerilla - Primary Skill Tree
This tree focuses on close-range combat and improves the turret's duration and damage capabilities. Essentially it allows a player to drop the turret to let it support him while he closes distance to engage enemies.

Sentry: Increases the damage and the duration of the Sabre Turret, this is a must have skill, you will not have to deal with enemies by yourself for a longer period of time.


Ready: Faster reloading speed, I only put 1 point in this due to my class mod but it is really useful as you will be able to do more damage per second with faster reloading speeds.


Willing: Improves shield recharge rate and decreases shield delay, this will help when you are about to die.


Onslaught: Increases gun damage and movement speed on kill, will be very useful in situations where there are tons of enemies around you.


Scorched Earth: Adds rockets to Sabre Turret, why not have this?



Able: Adds health regeneration when damage is dealt to enemies, note that this effect does not stack.


Grenadier: Increases the amount of grenades you can carry.



Double Up: Adds slag bullets and a second gun to the Sabre Turret, slag will be very useful as you don't have to switch between a slag and another gun during battles.

Skill Tree: Gunpowder

Gunpowder - Secondary Skill Tree
This tree focuses on medium range combat, providing many boosts to weapon damage of all kinds and general combat skills. Also allows for tactical deployment of the turret as "another soldier on the field" via the Longbow skill. This skill tree is pretty useless, especially the Nuke skill which only damages enemies near it when thrown, must well use a grenade.

Impact: Increases gun and melee damage.



Expertise: Increase weapon swap speed, aim speed and movement when zoomed in, I only put 1 point into this.


Metal Storm: Killing an enemy dramatically increases fire rate and reduces recoil for a short period of time, this can increase your damage per second by a lot.


Longbow: Increased health and turret deploy range.

Skill Tree: Survival

Survival - Primary Skill Tree
This tree is defense oriented, providing general defensive stat boosts as well as abilities that can pull the player back from the brink of death. It also improves the turret's deployment versatility.

Healthy: Increases maximum health



Preparation: Increase shield capacity and regenerates health when shield is full



Pressure: Improves reload speed and shield recharge delay based on how much health you have left, the lower the better


Phalanx Shield: Your turret projects a shield around itself and blocks enemy gun fire but allows friendly gun fire to pass through, note that the shield does not block melee attackers.


Quick Charge: Killing an enemy quickly regenerates your shield for a short period of time.



Resourceful: Increases cool down rate of you turret, this allows you to deploy your turret faster.


Grit: You gain a chance to ignore damage that would otherwise kill you and on top of that, you will regenerate half your maximum health, in other words, allows you prevent a death.


Gemini: Allows you to deploy a second turret.

Loadout: Weapons

Slot 1: Double Penetrating Unkept Herald. This weapon is regarded as the strongest pistol in the game. This will be your closed-ranged weapon, it can deal massive damage on slagged enemies if all projectiles land on them. This weapon is not effective at long-range.




Slot 2: Nasty Ogre. This will be your mid to long-ranged weapon. This gun can be replaced by the Kerblaster but I chose the Orge over it as the Orge has a higher fire rate and much larger magazine size.





Slot 3: Casual SWORDSPLOSION!!! I wanted to put a Norfleet in this slot but after my friend did some experimenting, the swordsplosion did higher damage per second than the Norfleet as the Norfleet has a lower fire rate, magazine size and a longer reload speed.




Slot 4: Consummate Florentine. This weapon will be your secondary weapon, always switch to this weapon after killing an enemy as it does both slag and shock! The enemy's shield will be down quickly and slagged, which is when you can switch to your DPUH to finish him off.

Loadout: Shields and Relic

Shields

The Bee. This shield is best when used against bosses and melee attackers due to its Amp damage that it gives when fully charged. This won't be very useful in an area where there are tons of gun wielding enemies as your shield won't be able to keep up with the damage you are receiving and you won't be able to utilise the Amp damage.





The Sham, preferably with 94% absorb chance. This shield picks up where The Bee left off as it has a very high absorb chance, it absorbs most of the bullets that your enemy's fire and gives it to you, but don't think you are invincible as this does not apply to melee attackers.





Relics

Elemental Relic: Explosion Damage. If you have realised, your first 3 weapons are all explosive weapons, so this relic will help you dish out more damage on your enemies.

Loadout: Class & Grenade Mods

Class Mod:

Legendary Solider Class Mod. Provides you with extra gun damage, higher fire rate and faster skill cool down rate. It also increases the top skills in your skill tree by 5 points.







Grenade Mods:

Magic Missile. The ever popular Raid Boss killer grenade mod. Use this mod if enemies are raid bosses. The grenade mod is a homing missile that homes into enemies and slags them.






Storm Front. A grenade mod that deals a lot of damage to any enemies caught in its field.

Main Loadout

Slot 1: Double Penetrating Unkept Herald

Slot 2: Nasty Orge / Kerblaster

Slot 3: Casual SWORDSPLOSION!!! / Puissant Norfleet

Slot 4: Consummate Florentine / Any slag weapon

Grenade Mod: Magic Missile / Storm Front

Class Mod: Legendary Solider

Relic: Elemental Relic: Explosive Damage

Shield: The Sham / The Bee

Weapons in italic are weapons that will replace the main weapon if you don't have them, but if you have the main weapons, it is strongly recommended to use them.

Boss Loadout

Slot 1: Double Penetrating Unkept Herald

Slot 2: Stopping Sandhawk - Shock

Slot 3: Casual SWORDSPLOSION!!!

Slot 4: Consummate Florentine

Grenade Mod: Magic Missile

Class Mod: Legendary Solider

Relic: Elemental Relic: Explosive Damage

Shield: The Bee

The sand hawk will replace your Ogre as it is much better against bosses when paired with The Bee

Playstyle - Tips & Tricks

With this build, your Sabre Turret damage and health are increased and gives the turret slag bullets, which can slag enemies and increase damage done by you. This allows for increased damage in both solo play and co-op play.

Executing Skill - Melee Attackers

Throw down turrets to distract enemies and start shooting, use your florentine if the enemy has a shield and switch to your DPUH to finish them off. Do not put the the turrets too closely, if one turret goes down, the enemy will have to walk to the other one, giving you more time shoot them. Once your skill ends or your turrets go down, move away from the enemies and switch to your long rang weapon, the Ogre.

Executing Skill - Ranged Attackers

When you throw down your turrets, the enemy would move away from it to start shooting, so you would want to throw your turret behind the enemy. The enemy would most likely turn around and target the turret. Once this happens, you can take out your DPUH and start shooting. Don't worry if the enemy is still targeting you as you have your Sham equipped, it has an absorb chance of 94% so most of the bullets won't be damaging you.

The End - Consider giving this a thumbs up if this helped/you enjoyed this!

My other Borderlands 2 Guides

ULTIMATE EXPLOSIVE GUNZERKER BUILD


Acknowledgments:

Thanks to

F4G-TP Steward Bot for helping me out!
Check out his Guide to playing melee Zer0!

Borderlands Wiki[borderlands.wikia.com] for the images

Changelog

June 5, 2016

- Minor updates since I was bored and no one will probably read this guide anymore.

January 2, 2014

- Added link to my second guide

December 31, 2013

- Added 'Main Loadout' section

- Added 'Boss Loadout' section

- Added 'Executing Skill...' at the Playstyle section

- Adding Images

- Edited Overview

- Editing Acknowledgements

December 28, 2013

- Added tags

- Edited descriptions

- Fixed blurry images

- Fixed spelling errors

[Xirce]

Do you happen to have any tips in what order you should level into or does it not matter?

[sjackimczuk]

Have you run all three (basic, TVHM, UTVH) phases'? If so, any insights?
PS Keep up the updates; someone is always looking for good writing!

[󠀡󠀡]

do you max out the skill for weapon and melee dmg?

[BlacksmithGames]

Actually, Gunpowder can be useful, but only if you are sure you can strike out for long periods of time without your Sabre Turret. All in all, though, Axton's skills are fun to toy around with.

[qbsuperstar03]

I have The Sham, but it's leveled to under 30. Given the low capacity even for its level, I take it you wear it not for taking hits but for absorbing bullets, and that kind of utility never gets outclassed. But my question is whether Fireball/Fire Storm are good substitutes for Magic Missile. Sure, they require direct hits and do fire damage which several enemies resist, but Firestorm goes on to drop several high-damage fireballs after the initial impact...I've taken out my own shields several times by accident. (at least then Flame of the Firehawk triggers its repeated novas)

[󠀡󠀡]

i would love if you had info about how to farm the legendaries....as i don't know how to get them

[Drewguyver]

using this in co-op right now actually, works well

[Maxxanth]

Very nice build. I'm using it currently in Coop. Thx

[Meiher]

Always liked this build. Still using it.

[Exotek]

Gunpowder useless?? No steady, battlefront and do or die which all increases grenade damage. You do realise that almost all Torgue guns get boosted by grenade damage (splash damage gets the boost to be exact), because all torgue guns have splash damage... I see you have Florentine in your loadout, guess what... that gun haves splash damage which means it gets boosted by grenade damage as well. Also no love for grenadier COM and Fastball grenades. These 2 things alone can be enough to faceroll OP8.