Best Borderlands 3 Amara Melee Build Guide

Of four Borderlands 3 characters, Amara is the only playable siren class whose skills naturally incline towards brawling. She is also good with weapons, but we think the melee-only offensive suits are better on Amara. After all, it’s not every day you see a siren with six hands.

That is why we have created the best Borderlands 3 Amara melee build guide for you so that you can have a unique experience of playing the entire game using fists only. You will need a couple of anointed gears to make this build work. Don’t know about anointed gear? Check out our guide here on this subject.

Amara Build In Borderlands 3

All in all, here is the total breakdown of the number of skills Amara’s melee build will have:

• 10 passive abilities, one action skill effect, and one action skill from the Brawl
• 3 passive abilities only from the Mystical Assault skill tree.
• 2 passive abilities and one action skill element from Fist of the Elements
• No abilities are required to purchase from the Enlightened Force skill tree.

Melee Build Skill Tree Overview – Essential Skills

Now you know which skill tree gets the most attention for Amara’s melee build. Let’s dive into the nitty-gritty of selecting all the right ones.

Clarity

This passive ability offers health regeneration. It is a vital skill while running the melee build. You need to max out this skill to get the highest bonus of its stats. It offers constant health regeneration, and the lower the health gets, the speedy its recovery.

Arms Deal

This passive ability grants more attack power to splash damage while at the same time offering a reduction to the splash damage from the enemies. We only put two skill points into it, as further upgrading the ability did not offer a significant jump in the stats.

Samsara

Samsara stacks gun damage and health regeneration if Amara lands an attack with her action skill only. The stacking is ridiculously useful for health regeneration and the occasional weapons usage. This one buffs the regeneration speed and weapon attack power out of all the abilities. A must-have ability that shines best if it is maxed out.

Helping Hand(s)

This one is another passive ability that offers damage reduction – quite handy when you are near the enemies at all times. Maxing it out is critical to this build, as Helping Hands offers up to 40% damage reduction for 15 seconds straight.

Find Your Center

This passive ability is the backbone of Amara’s melee build. Equipping it grants 100% melee damage and 75% increased melee range for 20 seconds. We chose this over Mindfulness because of the shield regeneration. Our build is based on not having a shield for as long as possible to stack the most significant damage.

One With Nature

Once again, this ability in the Brawl skill tree focuses on providing additional health bonuses to remain alive in challenging encounters. Maxing out and equipping the ability increases Amara’s max health and elemental damage resistance to her action skill element.

Jab Cross

Probably the second-best passive skill after the Find Your Center ability. It increases action skill and gun damage whenever Amara lands melee damage on enemies. More on how to get the most of this skill down in the Melee Build Playstyle section.

Guardian Angel

This second-chance type of passive ability grants 100% max health. Guardian Angel is the only ability in Amara’s melee build to have a cooldown of 120 seconds.

Blitz

What good is a melee build if enemies remain at a distance from you? Blitz ability is the answer to closing the distance between Amara and the foes. By activating this ability, she dashes a short distance toward enemies dealing with special melee strikes and elemental melee damage.

Personal Space

We almost forgot the unforgiving ability in the Brawl skill tree; Personal space. Equipping this skill allows you to deal bonus gun damage – the shorter the distance to a target, the greater the damage. There is a way to make the most of this passive ability, but more on it down in the Melee Build Playstyle section.

Revelation – Action Skill Effect

This is a must-have action skill effect from the Brawl (green) skill tree.

Phaseslam – Action Skill

Phaseslam needs to go into the action skill slot to make this melee build shine. If not, other action skills will not benefit the melee aspect of Amara, as they are designed for purposes other than brawling with fists.

Do Harm

The first passive ability that increases the overall strength of Phaseslam is Do Harm, located in the first row of Mystical Assault (blue-colored skill tree). You will need to max out this ability to get the highest stacks it offers for an action skill. Of course, it works well with other action skills. However, for the sake of Amara’s melee build, we need to exploit its perks the most.

Restless

Yet again, this is another passive ability that favors the cooldown of an action skill. We need to equip the maxed-out version of this to get the highest 25% cooldown rate of action skill. This passive ability ensures Amara uses her action skills frequently in the fights.

Without it, there will be a 35-second cooldown to reset the Phaseslam action skill use. We don’t want to wait that long for a build that focuses on close combat punch attacks. This is why this passive ability is very critical to our build.

Ascendant

The last passive ability you need from a Mystical Assault skill tree is Ascendant. It pretty much increases many minor passive action skill augments that aid you while running a melee build.

Anima

The first stop in the Fist of the Elements skill tree is Anima. The skills we pick from this tree are to strengthen Amara’s status effects. Anima increases status effect damage, and duration over time.

Illuminated Fist

Another passive ability to increase the overall melee damage. It is by far the best skill in the Fist of the Elements skill tree that goes well with Amara’s melee build.

Soul Fire – Action Skill Element

We highly recommend equipping Soul Fire for the last action skill element slot. As self-explanatory as the name goes, the Soul Fire action skill grants incendiary damage.

The Loadout

Now that you know the vital abilities in making a perfect melee build, you should know about different weapons, class mods, artifacts, and grenades. The loadout items add more value to the perks provided by the abilities mentioned above.

Pointy Psycho Stabber

To rack up the most melee damage, we highly recommend picking up Pointy Psycho Stabber, which buffs melee damage up to 120%. This weapon is also great for flying enemies who sometimes become hard to take down if your build focuses on melee-only attack power.

Equipping the weapon gives you an additional 37% weapon damage. It is why we think Point Psycho Stabber strikes a perfect balance in our melee build.

Redundant Face-puncher

Since you are rocking a melee build, grabbing a shotgun weapon that deals severe damage in close combat only makes sense. Redundant Face-Puncher gives an additional 60% melee damage – perfect for Amara’s melee build. Moreover, the 10% critical hit damage is something that you’d need to land a surprise high-attack damage. We are aware that 10% is not much. Still, this stat is pretty useful when rampaging quick melee attacks.

Brawler Ward

If you are content with Pointy Psycho Stabber but do not want to use Redundant Face-Puncher, Brawler Ward should be the next-in-line weapon to create the best Amara melee build.

Stat-wise, we think Brawler Ward benefits a melee build better. For obvious reasons, two out of the three stats give a buff to melee damage. Brawler Ward gives 25% melee bonus damage, which is a great addition when running with Pointy Psycho Stabber.

Class Mod

Flurrying Solitary Breaker is straight up the best legendary class mod you should equip to increase the potency of melee attacks and make the best Amara melee build. Not only does this class mod get you increased melee damage, but it also gives you a damage reduction of 29%. It is a must-have item for this build because you will be killing enemies at a close range nine out of ten times.

The closer you are to an enemy, the greater the bonus. Furthermore, getting the item with 50% plus melee damage is vital to Amara’s melee build.

Artifact

Once again, we stress getting an artifact that comes with melee damage. We recommend getting the legendary Unleash the Dragon artifact for Amara’s melee build. Do not equip it if it did not drop with a melee damage perk. It will not give you an advantage while creating the best Amara melee build – be mindful of that.

Grenade

Next in our loadout line is the grenade. We do not have any preference here on which type you should equip. However, we recommend getting the Firestorm legendary grenade mod since our artifact has incendiary damage. It spawns a rain of fireballs that look like meteors, but of course, the small ones. If not, you can pick whatever you like.

Melee Build Playstyle

We assume you have managed to equip every skill, weapon, class mod, and other items mentioned above. However, that is not everything to make this build a true chaos bringer while fighting the foes. You need to know the playstyle associated with the build to land the max damage possible.

For starters, you need a shield that stays broken or inactive for a long time. If you do not have one in your inventory, you can always get it by farming with people on Discord. It is a resourceful platform where you will find other players farming different items, and level 1 shield could also be it.

Equip it for melee attacks, leveraging the Brawler Ward for boosted damage when the shield remains broken. Skip Mindfulness for a stronger melee build. Use the Jab Cross passive ability with the Redundant Face-Puncher for maximum damage, especially at close range and with the Personal Space ability.

Pros

• The build is unaffected by a majority of random Mayhem modifiers.
• It is great for taking out singular targets.
• The build relies heavily on skill tree and leveling – not much complexity involved.
• Easily one of the overpowered builds in the game because of the damage reduction and high-level health regeneration perks.

Cons

• Guns neglected playstyle; it gets boring for some players.
• The build is a tad bit ineffective against shielded enemies and bosses.
• Dealing melee damage to flying enemies gets challenging and sometimes frustrating.

Now that you know everything about Amara melee build, are you excited to farm items, make the above-mentioned melee build, and punch enemies to death? Let us know more about it in the comments section below.