Chosing your vault hunter guide

This guide will go over all 6 of the playable vault hunters, to help you make your choice as to who you should play first, or simply give a better overview over them.

I will include what they specialize in, pros, ♥♥♥♥, action skill, capstones and personal opinion on them.

Capstones are the final skills in each skill tree.

I want to mention that staying in or over the recommended level from the story missions is more or less a must to do this game. If you are underleveled, enemies will take very low damage from a combination of your underleveled gear and their damage reduction VS low level players, and they will be able to kill you without a sweat. Having good gear is also important, but you don't need to stress too much about always using purple and legendary weapons.

Axton the commando

Specialization:
Assault rifles, grenades, minion turrets.

Pros:
Early healing skill, good with most guns, one of three vault hunters with natural slag ability.

♥♥♥♥:
Good on most things, great at little, starts to fade in ultimate vault hunter mode.

Action skill:
sabre turret.

Effect:
Throws a box on the ground, making a sabre turret. The turret will shoot any enemies in its line of sight and range, aswell as take attacks from enemies. Has many upgrades available from skill trees.

Personal thoughts:
Axton is a great character for newer players. He has a much more simple playstyle than the others, and his action skill is just dropping a turret on the ground and it controls itself. His access to a healing skill at level 6 makes him fantastic in the early game!

However, he lacks any real focus on combat. Certainly, he has boosts to assault rifles, but assault rifles are some of the worst weapon types in the game, which is a problem. Stil, he is very strong from level 1 to level 50, and after that stil holds up well.

From left to right skill tree capstones:

Adds a second gun to the turret and makes it shoot slag bullets.

Makes the sentry gun release a nuke when deployed, damaging and knocking back enemies but ignoring teammates.

Lets axton throw 2 sabre turrets in different places instead of 1.

Maya the siren

Specialization:
SMG's, crowd control, healing, elemental damage, slag element

Pros:
Early healing skills, has tons of healing skills for her and teammates, great boosts to SMG's, one of three vault hunters with natural slag abilities, action skill is great source of crowd control, great at taking out flying enemies.

♥♥♥♥:
Relies mostly on health regeneration to survive, some wasted potential when playing alone, most of her healing comes from kill skills and using her action skill, crippling her when fighting big bosses.

Action skill:
Phase lock

Effect:
Targets an enemy, lifts him into the air and makes him stuck, exposing them and taking them out of the fight for a few seconds. Using phaselock on the same enemy multiple times will have less effect.

Personal thoughts:
Maya is an amazing character that is strong throughout the game in both single and multiplayer, and another character I highly recommend for newer players. With all her healing skills, she is very survivable. Her SMG class mods makes her a monster with them, which is also great! She also has multiple skills that makes her skilled with elemental damage, so she has great variety available to her.

However, a problem with Maya is that almost all her healing is oriented with kill skills or only works when phaselocking enemies, meaning that large bosses and especially raid bosses more or less completely deny most of her healing, making her less good for raid boss farming alone compared to others, though she is fantastic when farming with others.

From left to right skill tree capstones:

Increases cooldown and duration of phaselock, and makes the enemy target become a minion for the duration, fighting enemies instead of you.

Can throw a ball of slag, dealing damage and slaging enemies nearby of it.

Adds slag, shock and corrosive elemental effect to her action skill (fire is added in an earlier skill in the tree).

Salvador the gunzerker

Specialization:
Being overpowered, constantly dualwielding, raid boss farming.

Pros:
Is one of the most broken and overpowered characters in the game, one of the best at farming raid bosses, can potentially be immortal with massive amounts of damage with some easy to obtain gear.

♥♥♥♥:
Can't use sniper rifles that well, is very awkward in the beginning of the game, is very awkward for newer players.

Action skill:
Gunzerking

Effect:
Heals himself and gains health and ammo regen while gunzerking and will dual wield weapons. Can dualwield any combination of weapons, which leads to him being so overpowered.

Personal thoughts:
Salvador is by far one of the best to farm raid bosses, and with some DLC items can become a god among men. His late game is great and he is very survivable. He has access to a health regen skill early on (though it is only a 0,5% with 5 points in it), and his potential his huge!

However, early on he is one of the worst vault hunters due to lack of proper gear and skills at that point, aswell as gunzerk mode is extremely awkward the first time you play him (it wasn't until the end of the first playthrough that I got the hang of it...). Not recommended as first character, maybe 2nd or 3rd at the earliest.

From left to right skill tree capstones:

Grants bonus damage to guns when killing enemies, which can potentially stack infinitely.

Grants massive firerate and reload speed boost while gunzerking and holding down the trigger.

Lets you give the finger to enemies while gunzerking, healing yourself and make you take notibly reduced damage for several seconds.

Zer0 the assassin

Specialization:
Melee, pistols, sniper rifles, critical hit damage.

Pros:
Amazing damage, great action skill for positioning, Plenty of mobility, kill skills and reload speed boosts.

♥♥♥♥:
Is the weakest character defensively, earliest self healing skill is available at level 21, Sniper rifles become very restricted in ultimate vault hunter mode (lvl. 51-80).

Action skill:
Deception

Effect:
Sends out a hologram and becomes invisible, gaining bonus gun damage (up to 200%), gun critical hit damage (up to 250%) and melee damage (up to 650%) the longer you stay in deception before breaking, leaving for 1 massive burst of damage. Has a short cooldown.

Personal thoughts:
Zero is a high risk, high reward character, where the risk is his only way of surviving is killing enemies fast and using deception, and the reward is a massive amount of damage to kill them with. Since he lacks any healing skills until level 21, he relies more on his shields than most of the other vault hunters.

Though Zero isn't a bad character, there isn't much about him that you will like if you don't like sniper rifles, though unfortunately, they become very strict with what you can use in ultimate vault hunter mode.

From left to right skill tree capstones:

Grants stacks for every critical hit made with sniper rifles, increasing gun damage (6% per stack) and critical hit damage (6% per stack) to sniper rifles, which can stack 999 times.

Lets Zero throw kunai while using deception without breaking stealth, holding random elemental effects that deal huge amounts of damage and can apply death mark (makes targets take 20% more damage for a few seconds).

Refunds some of the cooldown of deception when killing enemies with melee while in deception, potentially staying in deception forever (or at least for a very long time).

Gaige the mechromancer

Specialization:
General gun damage, shock element, Shields.

Pros:
Action skill is very powerful early on, has great snowball potential with skills, multiple useful skills for boosting shields, one of three vault hunters with natural slag abilities.

♥♥♥♥:
Can be very addictive, can cause ragequits, Much of her potential is wasted when not playing her in longer sessions, action skill becomes more of a meat shield than a killing buddy in ultimate vault hunter mode.

Action skill:
Summon deathtrap

Effect:
Summon deathtrap, a large floating robot torso with strong melee attacks and a shock beam. Has a long duration, but a long cooldown. Has many upgrades for him in defense and offense.

Anarchy mechanic:
One of Gaiges signature abilities is Anarchy. It is a skill which gives her a stack every time she kills an enemy or reloads an empty clip, granting 1,75% more gun damage, but 1,75% less accuracy for each stack. Max stack cap is between 150 and 600. She gains 1050% gun damage with 600 stacks. Stacks are lost when reloading a clip that isn't empty, when dying or quitting the game.

Personal thoughts:
Gaige Is great for players that play for longer periods of time, but I wouldn't say she should be your first character. You can get tons of stacks of anarchy and become a godess among men. However, Anarchy is the reason she is so addictive and can cause rage quits.

When you have a lot of stacks of anarchy, you feel like a god because you kill things so quickly and easely. Because of this, you don't want to quit so you keep going. But when you die or lose all your stacks of anarchy which you have spent a long time getting, chances are you will ragequit, or at the very least become very frustrated.

Stil, Gaige is a fun character, though she has arguably the worst capstones of all the vault hunters in the series (personal opinion).

From left to right skill tree capstones:

Grants a copy of your shield to deathtrap when you summon him.

Grants deathtrap bonus elemental damage when shooting him with elemental guns.

Lets you consume stacks of anarchy to slice with razor claws twice, dealing up to 360% extra melee damage with 600 anarchy stacks (about 720% with both slices)

Krieg the psycho

Specialization:
Melee, health, fire element, high risk and high reward, shotguns.

Pros:
Has amazing damage potential with fire and melee, is one of the best mobbers in the game (killing regular enemies), Relies very little on gear when built for melee, action skill can have little to no cooldown with the right skills. Is very good after level 13.

♥♥♥♥:
Has trouble against flying enemies, strong bosses and certain badasses (hyperion loaders and super badass varkids in particular), is the worst at farming raid bosses alone, can have trouble in co-op when building melee. Isn't very good until level 12-13.

Action skill:
Buzz axe rampage

Effect:
Pulls out his buzz axe, gains increased movement speed, gains 500% melee damage and can throw his buzzaxe for ranged attacks, regains all his health whenever he kills an enemy while in buzz axe rampage. Initially short duration with long cooldown, but can be significantly improved.

Personal thoughts:
Krieg is my favorite vault hunter in borderlands 2, but that is mostly because I love his melee. Due to his massive strength in skills, he can potentially run the game without any gear at all! He can also be really good or really bad for co-op, since he relies so much on killing enemies and constantly being close to death, which teammates can screw up without meaning to.

Certain bosses and badasses, and especially buzzards are extremely annoying to deal with when building krieg for melee, but he stil is a very fun character if you enjoy hacking enemies with a saw instead of shooting them with guns. You might even forget how guns work after playing this guy for a while (not overly serious).

From left to right skill tree capstones:

Makes enemies explode in an elemental nova when krieg kills them (this skill can make krieg clear an area of enemies within seconds).

grants increased melee damage and damage resistance when using buzz axe rampage while low on health, aswell as reset the cooldown.

Sends homing fireballs that deal fire damage and can ignite enemies when they attack krieg while he is on fire.

[TrueHero]

Also death trap doesn't become a meat shield if you level right I've seen him deal over 100,000 damage or more I forget

[Traj]

And melee Zer0 is the best Zer0 (he can deal max dmg)

[Traj]

Axton starts to fade - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GynTbbraifI

[Yakub NOI Gaming]

ok

[Count Smashula]

@✡Zohan✡
Its just the chance to set yourself on fire that gets bonuses from "Delusional damage", the elemental damage increase is stil set to fire. However, the "kill enemies and get more elemental effect chance" works on all elements, and is certainly a worthwhile skill to take if you use any elemental weapon.

[Yakub NOI Gaming]

u should put for kireg that he is elemental, not just fire because he has an ability in hellborn tree where the first 2 upgrades work with other elements

[Ace Wylden]

Axton is a powerhouse if you build him right. Going down the middle tree first, to learn how to shoot stuff (If it is your first time playing) and getting the nuke, suddenly you don't have an underpowered turret. Go down the right tree and get two turrets, suddenly you're destroying everything left and right. Explosive assault rifles become death machines and a slag sniper to switch into takes out the problem of UVHM.

[Visual learner]

Salvador mvp god of death

[Count Smashula]

Gray Box | Argon
Sure, but there isn't much to gaige without anarchy, seeing as deathtrap isn't very useful in late TVHM and throughout UVHM and shock is so and so without anarchy...
It's like playing call of duty for the story, you just don't do it.

[Argon]

You know it's not mandatory to play Anarchy Gaige right? You should clarify that in the guide.