Anyone share a Krieg gun build?

[Krash Megiddo]

Ad Hoc said this in another thread about a non-melee focused Krieg:

*Gun damage: Blood Bath has no accuracy penalty unlike Gaige's anarchy, allowing Krieg to do much better and consistent damage, since he can actually hit crit spots. Maya and Axton are not even worth mentioning in this regard. Zer0 can exceed this with Critical Ascensi0n, but it's overkill for majority of content which is time spent killing mobs, and this forces you to one gun type and one playstyle.

*Grenades: Axton doesn't have Bloodsplosion and a skill that when boosted guarantees grenade ammo to drop, making Krieg's grenade damage and usage more consistent. Other VHs are mediocre with grenades, not worth mentioning.

*Health regen:Krieg can regen health from simply applying a DoT, considering elemental weapons are the best in the game, you will pretty much always be healing while in combat. This is onpar with Maya's Life Tap, except it's not even a kill skill. Who needs to lock an enemy out of combat with phaselock, when you can just stand there and tank the damage? Of course Moxxi weapons exist, but if you factor that in, then even less reason to pick Maya.

*Slag and maintaining DPS: Krieg can swap and reload weapons insanely fast and has the best elemental chance increase skill in the game. This allows him to consistently slag and maintain his DPS in a fight. The only thing that beats him in slagging is Maya's Ruin capstone, which is guaranteed, that said Krieg can achieve virtually the same thing with tier 1 skills, and the only limitation is how much ammo you have, he doesn't have to wait on a cooldown.

My psycho just reached level 9 and strolled into Sanctuary. I assume most skill points get spent in the Bloodlust tree. Is there a guide that breaks down spending points per level? At least up to level 15 would be nice. The guides I can find on my own show everything at level 72+ which doesn't show where to invest points early game.

Thanks

[Renfrew]

Build guides are for the end game, since you have a lack of skill points in the early game and thus you can't really build any character. Although there is a lack of resources for Krieg specifically. Early game is really easy; just do side missions and overlevel, you can pretty much get away with doing anything.

Up to level 20 your priority is Blood Bath:
https://bl2skills.com/psycho.html#32005500000000000000000000000000000

Level 30:
https://bl2skills.com/psycho.html#32005500000000550000000000000000000

Blood Overdrive is a necessity as currently your action skill is the only way to heal. Since you are naturally using guns, you will virtually always have this melee damage boost active. This skill is usually bordering on useless, but similar to fuel the rampage it has an early game use.


Level 31:
https://bl2skills.com/psycho.html#55000500000000550100000000000000000

Near essential/High priority gear:

• Adaptive Shield - Health stacking is best, so always look for higher max health
  
• Blister Class Mod - Grenade capacity is useless, kill skill duration is amazing as it keeps Blood Bath bonus active for longer obviously. Class mod that boosts Blood Bath more takes priority over higher kill skill duration. Second skill doesn't matter much, but Blood Overdrive is better as it does help a little.
  
• Contraband Sky Rocket - Best grenade in the early game, no reason not to use this, honestly this will kill things insanely fast, to a point that you will probably be spending time spamming grenades thanks to Blood Bath, than actually shooting stuff.
  
• Vitality relic - Increases max health, very good on Krieg, pretty much useless on everyone else

Because of the class mod, at level 27 there is a little respec trick you can do:
https://bl2skills.com/psycho.html#55000100000000550100000000000000000
Sacrifice Blood Bath damage in exchange for Thrill of the Kill, so you get a healing skill earlier and thus no longer need to use Blood Overdrive or Krieg's Action Skill anymore. This is just an indication in general of how more skill points gives you that diversity.

[Krash Megiddo]

Thanks AH! I was about to give up on Krieg because I couldn't find any info like this. Just my perspective as a noob with <200hrs play time. Krieg is not for noobs. He's the most difficult character I've tried to make work. All of the others have an obvious "get out of jail free" power that's easy to understand and takes practice to git gud. But when used vs a boss is a game changer for that battle.

Kreig.. weak as a kitten. Losing shields and taking damage is a good thing for him? And his power is.. kill a minion to restore health? Git gud at throwing axes like a Viking. There are a few early bosses where this power is pretty useless because I can kill a minion, but I'm still faced with this boss that doesn't die so easily face to face. I realize I just don't get it. I've died vs bosses that gave me no trouble with my other characters.

I'm at level 11 and the only reason I survive battles is because one of my other characters shared a SMG with him that is OP for his level. Thus I have this lvl 11 character that is only any good because of this SMG and he can restore low health by using his power, but facing a big boss... toss grenade, run run run, toss grenade. Any minions around to restore health? Nope. run run run.

[Mr Nich]

Kreig is my current favourite character, however I still find him extremely difficult at low levels. I just start with a level 30 Kreig instead. I don't do that with any other character. If you are playing as a gun Kreig then the key skill is Blood Bath, which you cannot unlock until level 16. I suppose before then you could invest in Pain is Power over on the Hellborn side, then respec your skills, at 16, even then you need to be level 11 to access that.

In fact, to just put one point in Blood bath, Thrill of the kill and Pain is power, you need to be level 33, as they are all on different trees.

[Renfrew]

I have done Krieg from level 1 to 72 OP8, and then that same character to 80 OP10 (after the release of the Commander Lilith DLC). I agree the early game is the hardest, and the issue Krieg runs into is the same as Zer0, which is inefficient healing. Krieg is fortunate in that he gets access to healing earlier than Zer0 (he has his action skill and in his skill tree Thrill of the Kill is Tier 3 compared to Innervate and Resurgence being Tier 4).

Pain is Power is an interesting skill, while it does say it reduces crit damage, that only comes into play if you boost the skill to 7/5 or higher with a class mod at which point being on fire and shooting a crit spot does less damage. Outside of that PiP gets most value when you are on fire, and it is nice for a bit of extra damage when you might miss the enemy's crit spot.

In the early game the damage potential of Blood Bath is stronger and more worth it. PiP also has amazing synergy with splash-only weapons, but Blood Bath is already achieving that purpose as the splash damage means you can consistently keep Blood Bath going anyway. The biggest downside of all is that you would be taking Hellborn skills in the early game, which means setting yourself on fire at a time where healing is harder, so you will go down a lot more. You don't really need damage skills until strong bosses begin to show up, at which point you will have access to Blood Bath due to levelling up enough.

I would avoid Hellborn entirely until you have enough points for elemental empathy + Blood Bath, so at level 38:
https://bl2skills.com/psycho.html#55000100000000000000000005552130010

Then you can go all the way down and get Raving Retribution, then go back to Mania for Feed the Meat, Embrace the Pain, and 1 point in Thrill of the Kill. Obviously you will need a class mod for Blood Bath otherwise it is doing virtually nothing. Fortunately at this stage, you can find +4 class mods.

[Mr Nich]

Class mods...
There is no standout class for for a gun build
you could go for the ones from the Tina DLC, they boost various gun stats, but the attached skills are no good
there is Blister, which gives you more grenades, and boosts Blood Bath
there is Crunch, which boosts explosive damage and the skill strip the flesh which further boosts explosive damage, so while not directly boosting blood bath, sure help
Toast boosts pain is power, but is aimed at using fire weapons not explosive
Meat, Reaper, Sickle, slab, torch, wound are no good

wow, he has a lot of class mods, does everyone have this many?

once you get to level 61 and can get all the legendary mods, well, there is no "legendary blister" OR "legendary crunch" so it has to be "Legendary Reaper"

this, unlike the normal "reaper" mod, boosts Blood Bath, also as the "reaper" ability is to lengthen kill skill duration, it also makes it last longer. it ALSO boosts Thrill of the kill

of course, that is a very specific mod, meaning a lot of farming for tubbies, so erm.... maybe once you get past level 50, you can go back and kill Terramorphous? the mod from him isn't perfect, but it does boost Thrill of the kill and strip the flesh, like Toast, it is more about using fire weapons than explosive ones.

Still, you can always buy a fire SMG from Moxxi, and get Torgue guns from his DLC, so you can easily get one of each and switch between them.

[Renfrew]

Originally posted by Mr Nich:

There is no standout class for for a gun build

Not really

Early game
OP is in an early game position, not even at the end of Normal Mode yet, which severely limits the options available. This makes the Blister Class mod the best option.

Blister doesn't just give grenade capacity, it also gives kill skill duration in addition to boosting Blood Bath. Regardless of class mod Blood Bath is Krieg's best gun damage skill, there is no downside here to boosting it and the duration. Sure Blister is no Legendary Reaper, but this is early game. In terms of losing '+5 Thrill of the Kill', 1 point is enough to give this skill value, and even when using Legendary Reaper you should really only put 1 point in this, unless not using explosive guns at all; in that scenario you would max it out to get to Redeem the Soul. As for losing '+5 Fuel the Fire' that's a Hellborn skill, so setting Krieg on fire is a huge risk in the early game, and slag isn't really needed at this stage in the game, which is what it is most useful for.

Anything Hellborn is off the table, because the self-immolation with limited sustain is not good in the early game.

Crunch locks Krieg to explosive. It does present a problem if the player struggles to find decent explosive gear, which is down to RNG. Another issue with choosing a Crunch build with limited skill points is you are choosing to give up Blood Bath for only explosive damage, which is worse DPS. Additionally there is no kill skill duration boost offered by a Crunch build, so even once you get enough skill points Blood Bath not being active is the difference between shredding enemies and going back to okay damage.

Endgame
In the endgame Legendary Reaper is the indisputable best.

Hellborn builds (Toast and Legendary Torch) lock you to fire weapons and heavily rely on Damage Over Time. Legendary Torch is considered better than Toast, Toast doesn't boost Burn, Baby, Burn, and the main source of gun damage in these builds is (you guessed it) Blood Bath. PiP is not stronger than Blood Bath as discussed above, so choosing to boost it over Blood Bath makes little sense.

Crunch is a lot more viable and at max potential (Explosive Relic + perfect stats) it has around 10% higher Damage (if I remember correctly) than Legendary Reaper. That said similar to the early game the consistency issue with Blood Bath never goes away, since you won't have increased kill skill duration, and Blood Bath is still the main source of damage. At OP10 especially, it can be a huge struggle to get your kill skill active again if you end up in a bad situation.