Krieg: Is this Mania/Hellborn tree good?

[I Kinda Fail]

http://bl2skills.com/psycho.html#00000000000050540100145141553153051

I've tried the Bloodlust tree and I just can't make myself like it. I recently got a purple Torch mod, so figured I'd try it out, and I'm having a blast so far. I still love to melee though, and it sucks to not use his rampage at all, so I'm wondering if this build would work for mostly using guns, but activating the rampage whenever my health gets dangerously low?

My class mod boosts:
Fire Fiend by 5 points: 100% chance to ignite enemies with melee, plus +100% accuracy and 70% reload speed when on fire.
Elemental Elation by 3: +70% fire rate and +120% magazine size when dealing elemental damage.
Pain is Power by 4: +90% gun and melee damage when on fire.

My plan is to rush in with a Slagga to blast most enemies, which should almost always ignite me, then swap to my fire/corrosive weapon. Numbed Nerves and Elemental Empathy should keep my health up, but Release the Beast will instantly heal me if it gets too close. I also put a point into Thrill of the Kill, because my intention is to stay up and firing, and use melee whenever it gets too close, whereas I'm used to doing 90% melee and 10% guns.

Fire Fiend will give me a 100% chance to ignite enemies with every melee attack while rampaging, further boosted by Burn, Baby, Burn. Flame Flare will have a 45% chance to reignite them, and as far as I can tell, Elemental Empathy stacks, so I could potentially run around igniting several enemies for tons of healing before beginning to focus on one enemy until the rampage ends. Finally, my Raving Retribution will theoretically keep shooting out fireballs as I rampage, so even enemies at a distance will be covered.

Some questions.

1. Is there anything glaringly obviously wrong with this? Yes, I know how strong Bloodsplosion and Blood Bath are.

2. Is Hellfire Halitosis worth it, ever, in any situation, with any mod or gear modifiers? Maybe when surrounded, breathing in a circle to get tons of healing? I've heard nothing but bad things.

3. What kind of shield would be good for this? I'm currently using the Rough Rider, but have an at level fire spike shield, a maylay shield, plus an adaptive shield. I'm saving the Firehawk quest until I hit level 72, because AFAIK there's no way to farm it. I'm fine with continuing to use the Rough Rider, if it's the best.

4. Is Salt the Wound, like... good? I can't give myself stacks from fire damage, and I seem to lose stacks of it very quickly, even when in combat. I also very rarely find any good elemental shotguns - Tediore seems weak, and Hyperion are rare for me to come by. Even when I ran an explosive build, using StW with a Torgue (Hulk? Ravager? something) couldn't even compete with a DPUH.

5. Sometimes, I just... don't light myself on fire. Why? I was trying out a few builds on the... training dummy in Marcus's shop, and I hit him with 10 rounds from my corrosive SMG, 10 shots from my fire pistol, and 4 shots from my Tediore fire shotgun. None ignited me, although he did take fire and acid DOT. My Slagga ignited me immediately, though.

6. Are there any weapon types or legendaries in particular I should be looking for? I currently have a Maliwan pistol with Vladof barrels as my main weapon, and a Tediore fire shotgun for my secondary. I know Moxxi has a healing fire SMG, and the Hellfire is dropped by Scorch. I'm planning to get the Firehawk shield at 72. Any particular grenades or relics? (Currently using either an explosive Fastball or a longbow Tesla, plus a +50% health relic.)

[I Kinda Fail]

Off topic, but I feel like they should've given Krieg a skill that makes him run faster, either while rampaging or while on fire. Would definitely fit the motif of chasing people to hack them up, or cartoony people moving faster when they're on fire.

[Higf9]

He does have movement speed boots from buzz axe rampage and also salt the wound is very good for the heart breaker and the slow hand

[West Dragon]

You don't need StV when combining Mania with Hellborn unless you plan on simply throwing your Buzzsaw axe during rampages.

I'd take those points and max Salt the Wound and Embrace the Pain. Also, how often do you rely on melee attacks as opposed to gun damage? If you find yourself relying more on gun damage then consider Strip the Flesh an alternative to Empty the Rage. The bonus explosive damage makes getting second winds easier with launchers.

Your Hellborn tree looks fine to me, but you may want to consider reallocating some points from it into Bloodlust for Bloodfilled Guns. You could also max Elemental Elation instead of Fire Fiend for ridiculously large mag sizes when paired with Bloodfilled Guns. Ever see an Unkempt Herold with 60+ rounds in the chamber? I have. It's crazy fun.

[I Kinda Fail]

Originally posted by EGAD!:

You don't need StV when combining Mania with Hellborn unless you plan on simply throwing your Buzzsaw axe during rampages.

I'd take those points and max Salt the Wound and Embrace the Pain. Also, how often do you rely on melee attacks as opposed to gun damage? If you find yourself relying more on gun damage then consider Strip the Flesh an alternative to Empty the Rage. The bonus explosive damage makes getting second winds easier with launchers.

Your Hellborn tree looks fine to me, but you may want to consider reallocating some points from it into Bloodlust for Bloodfilled Guns. You could also max Elemental Elation instead of Fire Fiend for ridiculously large mag sizes when paired with Bloodfilled Guns. Ever see an Unkempt Herold with 60+ rounds in the chamber? I have. It's crazy fun.

1. StV has been a staple of my build for ages. I'm used to throwing the axe, now. I still plan to rampage on occasion, but want to be using guns hopefully at least 80% of the time. The point of rampaging is to heal to full health immediately in emergency situations, while also gaining the damage reduction, and since I'm losing access to my guns I want my melee to be beefy.

2. I was asking how good Salt the Wound is, because I very rarely find good elemental shotguns, compared to Torgue and Jakobs, and usually by the time I've killed every enemy in an area I'll only have 8-12 stacks, so I'm not even getting the full bonus before the fight is over. That might change as the game progresses, or since I'm using Elemental Empathy rather than the rampage for the majority of my healing, but Salt the Wound has never seemed very good in terms of the melee boost, at least.

3. I did consider boosting Strip the Flesh instead of the melee or fire rate boost, since they're fairly negligible, but I'm not sure how much use I'd get out of it. 15% on a fastball, or another 30% on an elemental rocket launcher, but only particularly useful when in FFYL with this build. I'm usually not a fan of skills that only boost FFYL, so this one's iffy. I might take it over the melee damage boost, since it's only a minor boost, or over the fire rate boost since Elemental Elation already gives a huge boost to fire rate.

4. Yeah, I was running Mania/Hellborn on a tubby run in the Dust when I originally tried out my new class mod. I had a pistol magazine size of something like 41, when it's usually like 9. Problem was that I'm not used to using Tediore, so my shotgun which had 30 bullets in it... got lobbed at a baby spiderant. :P Fire Fiend boosts reload speed by a pretty good bit so I'm not super worried about magazine size. Anything that can fire 10+ bullets without being interrupted is fine with me.

[West Dragon]

What shield are you using? Salt the Wound Only stacks as long as you are taking health damage.

Rough Rider is obviously the best choice. Also, Salt the Wound is geared towards prolonged fights. The longer the battle the stronger Krieg gets. Sort of a "better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it" skill in my opinion.

But if you aren't actually dealing much in the way of melee attacks or shotgun attacks then I could definitely see why you're questioning its usefulness. If you haven't any good shotgun and you aren't utilizing melee attacks all that much then seems like a bunch of wasted points, after all.

[HiTmAn]

wen u spec for hellborn u dont wish rtb ,,, just pick up health bonus and fire rate all rest left right..expect u dont need fuel the bllod cz u will not melee witch u can put 4 point in strip the flesh and 1 point in thrill the kill witch is 1 pointer pretty goodhttp://bl2skills.com/psycho.html#55500500005100550000000005555005051
or this http://bl2skills.com/psycho.html#55500500005100550104000005505005051

[West Dragon]

Originally posted by HiTmAn:

wen u spec for hellborn u dont wish rtb ,,, just pick up health bonus and fire rate all rest left right..expect u dont need fuel the bllod cz u will not melee witch u can put 4 point in strip the flesh and 1 point in thrill the kill witch is 1 pointer pretty good http://bl2skills.com/psycho.html#55500500005100550000000005555005051
or this http://bl2skills.com/psycho.html#55500500005100550104000005505005051

Fixed the first link in your post. You forgot a space.

Also. I tried Bloodsplosion+Hellborn and I ended up dying...a lot. RtB is an emergency switch for Krieg for when ♥♥♥♥ hits the fan. I do NOT recommend building him without it.

[West Dragon]

Double post, I know, but it's been a little while since anyone's commented. ANd I thought that while there's a recent topic on Mania+Hellborn Krieg, I'd share with you the "Pyromania" build (least that's what I'm calling it) I plan on using for the 5th round of Digistruct Peak and, hopefully, each round after that.

http://bl2skills.com/psycho.html#50500010000000550104155141505152051

The gear I'm using is...

Class Mod: Legendary Torch
Relic: Blood of the Ancients
Grenade: Fastball
Shield: Rough Rider
Weapons: Badaboom, Hornet, Unkempt Herald, Slagga, and Blockhead.

While I was recently opposed to Silence the Voices, I discovered fire rate bonuses increase my axe throwing rate, which seems obvious to me now.

Also, the gear I use I chose based on both effectiveness and the ease with which it is to replace them as needed. My mod and relic don't need changed for a while, Fastball from Boil, Rough Rider from the Bulwark, Badaboom from King Mong, Hornet from Knuckledragger, Unkempt Herald from Savage Lee, Slagga from Tector and Jimbo, and Blockhead from Badass Creepers.

[I Kinda Fail]

I still don't understand, really, how or when Salt the Wound is useful. I just did the Wedding Day Massacre DLC boss fight, where there's 2 goliaths and tons of enemies attacking you, and I kept glancing at my buffs and never saw Salt the Wound on there.

I started the Tiny Tina DLC, and let a skeleton attack me 5 times in a row, and each stack I gained was lost in less than half a second. How in the world do you maintain stacks of this? Even in the middle of a boss battle, I didn't see it ever activate.

I'm using the Rough Rider, and the Hellborn tree. Could either of those be a reason it's working so poorly? Or is this normal? I've specced out of the skill entirely at this point, as I'm struggling to get more than a single stack of Salt the Wound.

[West Dragon]

Okay, I think I know the problem you are having. When you spec into elemental elation and salt the wound, there is a known and unresolved graphical bug in which the game will only show the icon for one of them and not both. However, both skills continue to function as intended. You will simply only have a visual indicator of one or the other and not both.

[Calo Nord]

This is the build I would recomend for your level http://bl2skills.com/psycho.html#40000000000050550005050155501150151

But i'm no expert.

[TEoL says Free Palestine!]

Originally posted by EGAD!:

Okay, I think I know the problem you are having. When you spec into elemental elation and salt the wound, there is a known and unresolved graphical bug in which the game will only show the icon for one of them and not both. However, both skills continue to function as intended. You will simply only have a visual indicator of one or the other and not both.

Was looking around for answers to this, thanks man!