FL4K end game guide - Skag Master

This guide describes a skill tree that you can use on several builds, it mainly depends on your shield choice. The idea is going to use the Skag pet (melee pet) to its full potential with synergy with some rare shields. As your defense, you'll have all the skills available to convince your enemies to attack everyone but you. As an offensive, you'll have a full yellow Hunter skill tree, giving you strong crits and the ability to use powerful offensive shields to their full potential.

It is intended for lvl 72 Mayhem 11. Normal difficulty. All DLC.

Skill tree

Link to lootlemon[www.lootlemon.com]

For all variants we use Great Horned Skag[www.lootlemon.com] or Eridian Skag[www.lootlemon.com] pet. The first evolution of the pet is better for passive bonuses (+ gun damage) and the second one has more powerful Attack Command.



The main reason for using Skags is becouse they mainly do melee damage.

Basic build - Using passive or "on depleted" shields

Essential gear

• Red Fang[www.lootlemon.com] class mod.
  
• Peregrine[www.lootlemon.com] class mod.
  
• 3RROR Cmdl3t[www.lootlemon.com] class mod.
  
• Cosmic Stalker[www.lootlemon.com] class mod.
  
• Deathless[www.lootlemon.com] artifact.
  
• Jacobs Company Man[www.lootlemon.com] artifact.

Any of these shields

• Ward[www.lootlemon.com].
  
• Red Suit[www.lootlemon.com] with Roid augments.
  
• Any shield with high passive AoE damage per second or solid Roid augments.
  
• Recommended anointment for your shield is "On action skill end, gain 50% bonus Cryo damage with weapons for 10 seconds".
  
• Note: Shooting Star[www.lootlemon.com] is not recomenned since somehow its ability is not passed to the Skag.

Recommended gear

• Skullmasher[www.lootlemon.com] Jacobs sniper rifle.
  
• Rowan's Call[www.lootlemon.com] Jacobs assault rifle.
  
• Hellwalker[www.lootlemon.com] Jacobs shotgun.
  
• Both Fish Slap[www.lootlemon.com] and Ghast Call[www.lootlemon.com] grenade mods.
  
• Re-Volter[www.lootlemon.com] shield.
  
• Shlooter[www.lootlemon.com] artifact.

Playstyle

All pets have a base form, a first evolution, and a second evolution in order of unlocking as you progress through the skill tree. Usually the first evolution is the goto option for passive bonuses and the second if you plan to use your pet more actively. The point behind this build is that pets usually have a huge pool of HP and shields are just negligible boost which does not improve its survivability much further. That means you are passing your shield abilities to your pet not for the shielding itself but for using passive or "on shield depleted" abilities since shield on him will be depleted almost all the time.

I do recommend to use Ward[www.lootlemon.com] shield which improve our pet melee damage significantly. It is also very easy to farm this shield. Only slightly better shield for this is Red Suit[www.lootlemon.com] with double Roid augments. However it is quite rare and only 1/49 shields has this specific combination of augments.

Gamma Burst variant

If your pet is downed, be sure to use your Gamma Burst for revive since you are a bit vulnerable without him and usual reviving may not be possible.

Use your Gamma Burst[www.lootlemon.com] as much as possible. With the presented skill tree and Gamma Burst you should have all the time you need to land proper crit with you weapons. It is recomended to use Jacobs snipers or assault riffle from the distance with powerful crits thanks to yellow Hunter skill tree.

All your weapons should have anointment "While Gamma Burst is active, gain 115% bonus radiation damage."

This variant can use any artifiact you like which is its main advantage and you can use Shlooter[www.lootlemon.com] for farming world drops. The best damage output variant is probably Jacobs Company Man[www.lootlemon.com].

This variant lacks damage against armored target a bit. A good compensation is to use some solid corrosive grenade mod such as Ghast Call[www.lootlemon.com].

Rakk Attack variant

There are two ways how to use this variant with using Rakk Attacks.

First one uses shield Re-Volter[www.lootlemon.com] with augment "On action skill start Activate any effects that trigger on shield break or fill" and 3RROR Cmdl3t[www.lootlemon.com] class mod. The importance of this class mod is about passing shock burst to your pet as well. It is not becouse the ability to spam Attack Command, which is simply just nice extra bonus but becouse of having free skill Capacitance[www.lootlemon.com]. After you use your Rakk Attacks and Re-Volter triggers on you, your pet shield immediately starts recharging and if he is in the middle of the fight he also immediately losses his shield, which means he gets the Re-Volter boost too. The duration and cooldown for Capacitance is 16 seconds which is just 1 second longer than Re-Volter shield boost so its nearly perfectly sinchronised.

The second uses Peregrine[www.lootlemon.com] class mod. Fish Slap[www.lootlemon.com] grenade mod is highly recommended. As a shield you some of the mentioned Roid shield and the best anoitment is "On action skill end, gain 50% bonus Cryo damage with weapons for 10 seconds". For your grenade mod use "On action skill end, gain 50% bonus Corrosive damage with weapons for 10 seconds". Important note, despite its description these anointment works on your Grenade Mod and your Rakk Attack damage also.

Both of these needs to have Deathless[www.lootlemon.com] artifact to allow you to use anointment "While under 50% health, gain 100% bonus radiation damage" on your weapon. An important fact about this anointment is that it boost your Grenade Mod and your Rakk Attack also. It is also worth to mention that Deathless artifact is very defensive due to skill Shared Spirit[www.lootlemon.com].

Fade Away variant

This variant uses Fade Away even if its with one skill augment only. The best class mod for this is Cosmic Stalker[www.lootlemon.com] which is clearly the best passive damage booster you can have and outperform Bounty Hunter[www.lootlemon.com] even on bosses. According to our skill tree it boosts damage (multiplicatively) by 21-49 percent for you and by 37-92 percent for your pet. This interval depends on how many 0-3 of skill bonus Big Game[www.lootlemon.com] you have from this class mod so it is highly recommended to try to find some with 3.

You can simply switch to this variant of skill whenever you just need to kill something really fast. The best weapon is Rowan's Call[www.lootlemon.com] with anointment "While Fade Away is active, gain 150% increased weapon damage". The best shield is Re-Volter[www.lootlemon.com]. You can use any artifact you want.

Master build - On break triggering shields

With this build we use slightly different skill tree. It allows us to use powerful "trigger on shield break" abilities for our pet and we can use even more variety of powerful shields. It requires more player skill for survability by lacking Dominance[www.lootlemon.com] thus the name "Master".

Lint to lootlemon[www.lootlemon.com]

Gear setup

Just use the same gear and Gamma Burst ability as within Basic build described above. With difference that now you can use more variety of shields with on shield break abilities like Nova. The list of the most powerful shields are

• Messy Breakup[www.lootlemon.com].
  
• Black Hole[www.lootlemon.com]
  
• Scream of Terror[www.lootlemon.com]
  
• Nova Berner[www.lootlemon.com] or any powerful Nova shield.

The main idea is to have 1 point only in skill Fuzzy Math[www.lootlemon.com] and as much as possible crits done by our pet. It allows him to recharge his shield very frequently but also lost his shield on spot against almost any foe. Your personal crits also do the job. In most situations the shield break abilities will spam on its internal cooldown on your pet (which is about 3 seconds in most cases). With this build Messy Breakup[www.lootlemon.com] is a very good option when your pet is followed by stacked army of bots zapping nearby enemies. It is also worth to mention to have skill Success Imminent[www.lootlemon.com] for this skill tree so you also have another Nova effect included from your skills.

If you play with Messy Breakup[www.lootlemon.com] specifically, it is better to have some skills in Monkey Do![www.lootlemon.com] instead of Success Imminent[www.lootlemon.com]. Becouse Messy Breakup shield is a large source of crit from pet. However, it should be also mentioned that using this build with this specific shield is perhaps way too powerful and it does not really matter on details in your skill set as long as you have Fuzzy Math skill. Your pet will be so strong that there will be only few occasions when he gives you some time to shoot something before he take it down. Its more like meme spec which probably should not exists.

Re-Volter variant

It is possible to combine these skill tree with Re-Volter[www.lootlemon.com] shield as well but some parts need to be changed according to Basic build described above. You dont need 3RROR Cmdl3t[www.lootlemon.com] anymore but you still do use Rakk Attack to trigger Re-Volter bonus on yourself. The best replacement for your class mod is probably Peregrine[www.lootlemon.com] with combination of some high damahe Grenade mode like Fish Slap[www.lootlemon.com] with anointment "On action skill end, gain 50% bonus Corrosive damage with weapons for 10 seconds".

Special section about Red Suit shield

The Red Suit[www.lootlemon.com] is very special and there are plenty of rules and exceptions which might not be obvious. The basic mechanic about this is constant radiation aoe damage. And this ability can be passed to pet via Take This![www.lootlemon.com] skill. The best variant for this shield is with double Roid augment which also improves pet melee damage by 180 percent. However the chance for this combination drop is 1/49 only which is "quite rare".

Now lets talk about all the rules which makes this shield so overwhelming.

• On Mayhem 10-11 the base damage of pet's nova is 1.5× higher then FL4K's (mayhem scale for pet is 51×, mayhem scale for player is 34×).
  
• Area-Of-Effect damage from artifact boosts FL4K's nova and pets's nova too. If this stat is occuring on 2-3 position of artifact, it also extends nova raidus.
  
• Splast damage bonus stat from class mod improves both FL4K's and pet's nova damage.
  
• Radiation damage bonus stat from artifact boosts FL4K's nova damage but does not improve nova of pet.
  
• Thanks to Throatripper[www.lootlemon.com] skill, nova damage from pet can crit. This crit also triggers Leave No Trace[www.lootlemon.com] skill and if pet is surrounded by enemies, it really helps keeps FL4K's ammo in their weapon up (especially snipers). However FL4K's nova cannot crit not even with Megavore[www.lootlemon.com] skill.
  
• Damage tick from nova can cause radiation status effect in fixed 10 percent chance per tick on each target. This damage is negligible becouse it is not boosted by any mayhem scaler. On mayhem 10-11 you will have about 1-3 million damage per each tick and only about 200 damage on status efect tick caused by this nova. However, this status effect (as any status effect reaply) can extend already presented more powerful radiation status effect. This makes this shield also good when your own damage is mostly radiation.
  
• Anointments "While under 50% health, gain 100% bonus radiation damage" and "On action skill end, gain 50% bonus elemental damage (specific element) with weapons for 10 seconds" boosts FL4K nova too but does not improve nova of pet.
  
• All skils and stack bonuses which improves pet's damage, also improves nova damage from your pet. These skills are mostly multiplicative.
  
• Found Maliwan soldiers with reflecting shield too annoying? Use pure radiation weapon against them (such as radiation Rowan's Call). Reflected bullets to you will not harm you since Red Suit shield provides you 100 percent Radiation imunity.

Note: All of these points and claims one by one was tested on dancing with Shiv boss using skag pet. Ammo reffil via pet talents was tested in Benediction of Pain location during fighting loader bots. Proc chance od status effect by shield was tested by counting ticks for ~50 status effect reaply and the result was 10.02 percent proc chance.

Some another advices for the Mayhem 10-11 gameplay

Efficient world drop farming method

A very good place for the world drop is The Slaughter Shaft[www.lootlemon.com]. I recomment to use Gamma Burst variant with Shlooter[www.lootlemon.com] artifact and play on Mayhem 10. For the best outcome try to roll

• Easy -- Lootsplosion
  
• Medium -- whatever (Healy Avenger is fine)
  
• Hard -- whatever (Chain Gang is fine)
  
• Very Hard -- Holy Crit.

The importat part is the Lootsplotsion - Holy Crit combo especially for FL4K. The Holy Crit is a bit damage loss but should not be a problem for crit oriented FL4K and with this you will be probably much more successful with triggering Lootsplosion. It is a nice challenge too!

Tip for ammo issues

If you like to play with Snipers and Shotguns you may run into low ammo problem against some harder raids like Midnight's Cairn[www.lootlemon.com]. A good tip how to refresh your ammo is to find any artifact with Cutpurse prefix which gives you 13 percent of your maximum ammo capacity by melee. Equip Fish Slap[www.lootlemon.com] and Peregrine[www.lootlemon.com] also and few cast od Rakk Attack will refil your ammo very soon.

Tip for Eridium farm

You will need a lot of Eridium if you wish to have your shiny weapons with the proper anointment. There is a lot of videos and guide about this. You just need to google "Eridium farm" and watch the first youtube video you find. Yet there is one good advice which is not mentioned very often, it may seem obvious, but you may forgot about it. The best Eridium farm tip in my opinion is: Don't ignore it on your regular play. Just go and kick that patch. Yep, thats it. The quickest patch is the one which is on the road.

Which element to choose?

Obviously against each type of HP bar (flesh, shield, armor) there is an efficient element. But you probably dont want to switch your weapon for every single bar when your foes dies in 2-6 seconds. So you probably accept that sometimes you use not the most efficient weapon but you are happy becouse you have one weapon to cover pretty much everything. Or do you? What is the optimal element composition for your weapon if you fight for example against some mob with 3 bars all flesh shield and armor? It seems kinetic (non-elemental) is superior but it might not be always the case. Here are some facts you need to know

• When weapon is spawn with elemental damage, it is usualy also lowered. Shredifier with radiation do 25 percent less damage than Shredifier kinetic. And with Cryo it does 15 percent less damage. That means Cryo Shredifier with +100 percent Radiation bonus will be much better than Radiation Shredifier with +100 percent Cryo bonus.
  
• Keep in mind that there is Harmagedon Guardian Rank which gives you +5 percent damage per each unique status effect applied to the enemy in the same time.
  
• Combination of elements might be slightly worse option then pure element with advanced gear where you may have some bonuses to particular elemental damage.
  
• Shock damage seems like the worst element becouse shield hp are usually low on target. But it should be noted it is not that bad on armor efficiency (65 percent) with compare to Incendiary or Radiation (50 percent).

As example, if you are looking for Rowan's Call[www.lootlemon.com] with anointment +115 radiaton damage bonus, which suppose to be efficient against all types of health bars, it will be surprisingly Shock variant. If you are looking for universal weapon, look on the part you can varying with and choose that one which is covering your weakest spot the most.

If you break down the numbers, Shock variant of Rowan's Call with +115 radiation damage anointing will do against a pure Radiation variant -6.5 percent against flesh, +46.4 percent against shield, and +23.3 percent against armor. And even if you completely ignore the shield part, I'd say the gain against armor is worth the small loss against flesh.