Best Borderlands 3 Amara Melee Build Guide

Out of four in-game characters, Amara is the only playable siren class whose skills naturally incline towards brawling. She is good with weapons as well, but we think the melee-only offensive suits better on Amara. After all, it’s not every day you see a siren with six hands.

It is why we have come up with 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. There are a couple of anointed gears you will need to make this build work. Don’t know about anointed gear? Check out our guide here on this subject.

Amara’s melee build will utilize maximum abilities from the green skill tree or better-called “Brawl.” To make a mayhem-causing melee build, you will need to max out most of the skills in this particular tree. We did not waste any skill points to purchase abilities from the Enlightened Force skill tree – skip everything in there.

When it comes to the Mystical Assault skill tree, there are three abilities you need to stack their perks with the green ones. Last but not least, you need to buy two skills and equip one action skill element from the Fist of the Elements skill tree.

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

• Equip 10 passive abilities, one action skill effect, and one action skill from the Brawl
• Equip 3 passive abilities only from the Mystical Assault skill tree.
• Equip 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 that 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 offers 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. Out of all the abilities, this one buffs the regeneration speed and the weapon attack power. 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—more on this down in the Melee Build Playstyle section.

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, elemental damage resistance to her action skill element.

Jab Cross

Probably the second-best passive skill after Find Your Center ability. It increases action skill and gun damage every time 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 is a second-chance type of passive ability which 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 for a short distance towards 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

To make this melee build shine, Phaseslam needs to go into the action skill slot. If not, other actions 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 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, 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 skill quite frequently in the fights.

Because without it, there will be a 35 seconds cooldown to reset the Phaseslam action skill use. We don’t want to wait that much for a build that focuses on close combat punch attacks. It 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

Once again, 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

For the last action skill element slot, we highly recommend equipping Soul Fire. As self-explanatory as the name goes, Soul Fire action skill grants incendiary damage. It’s always fire when it comes to unleashing the mayhem, right? I guess it is, at least when you are making the best Borderlands 3 Amara Melee Build.

The Loadout

Now that you know about the abilities that are vital 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 as it 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 additional 37% weapon damage. It is why we think Point Psycho Stabber strikes a perfect balance in our melee build. It has the perfect stats to make you overpower in close combats and packs average ranged attack damage.

Redundant Face-puncher

Since you are rocking a melee build, it only makes sense to grab a shotgun weapon that deals severe damage in close combats. 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 you are rampaging quick melee attacks.

You will not even realize how frequent the 10% chance comes and goes while fighting the hordes and causing all the mayhem. These two extremely useful buffs of Redundant Face-puncher come at the expense of -56% weapon damage. However, since our focus is to deal pure raw melee damage, this should not be our concern while making the best borderlands 3 Amara melee build.

Brawler Ward

If you are content with Pointy Psycho Stabber but do not want to use Redundant Face-Puncher, then Brawler Ward should be the next-in-line weapon to create the best Amara melee build. Other than the gory animation and satisfying feel a shotgun gives in the game, 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 you are running with Pointy Psycho Stabber.

Moreover, we think the “300% melee damage while the shield is depleted” is overpowered. This perk shines best when the shield is no longer usable or broken. We have a workaround to break the shield and make it inactive for a longer time. But, more on it down in the Melee Build Playstyle section.

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 this class mod gets you increased melee damage, but it also gives you damage reduction by 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. If you have a similar item with damage stats in the mid-20s or 30s of percentage, it is pretty useless for this build. So, start farming it now if you are looking to rock this insane melee build. Get the melee damage number up to 50%.

Artifact

Once again, we stress on getting an artifact that comes with melee damage. For Amara’s melee build, we recommend getting the legendary Unleash the Dragon artifact. 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 Borderlands 3 Amara melee build – be mindful of that. Rejoice, if you already have an Unleash the Dragon artifact item rocking decent melee and elemental damage in your inventory – you are saved my friend from the farm fest.

Here is an image for your reference. If you get the artifact closer to these stats, know that your Amara will land some blazing punches on enemies.

Grenade

Next in our loadout line is the grenade. We do not have any preference here which type you should equip. However, since our artifact has incendiary damage, we recommend getting Firestorm legendary grenade mod. It spawns a rain of fireballs that look like meteors, but of course, the small ones. If not, you can pick whatever you like. Because while playing with Amara build, most of the time, you’d be carried away by the thrill and joy of punching enemies in the face.

Melee Build Playstyle

We assume that you have managed to equip every skill, weapon, class mod, and other items we mentioned above. However, that is not everything to make this build be 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 by far the resourceful platform where you will find other players farming different items, and level 1 shield could also be it.

When you the level 1 shield, equip it and use it while fighting with melee attacks only. You will immediately notice that the shield breaks in almost every 2^nd or 3^rd attack, and it stays inactive for a long time.

Furthermore, this is also when Amara’s melee build peaks performance and lands some crazy hits. Your attacks will be favored by Brawler Ward the most, and the longer that shield remains broken, the higher the duration of Amara’s melee damage. For this reason alone, we mentioned skipping Mindfulness passive ability because it favored the regeneration duration of shields, which could make Amara’s melee build weak.

Secondly, when equipping Jab Cross passive ability, we recommend using Redundant Face-Puncher over Brawler Ward as the perks of both support each other – the closer the distance to the enemy, the higher the damage. Additionally, it also goes well with the Personal Space ability. Stacking the perks of these three items will guarantee unforgiving melee damage.

Is Borderlands 3 Amara Melee Build Guide Worth It?

Like every other build in Borderlands 3, Amara melee build, too, has its uses based on the accumulation of all the fixed and variable perks your loadout offers. One thing is sure; getting close to enemies, taking and dealing damage is the only way you’ll be playing while rocking this build. So, here is our take on how this build performs out in the wild.

Crowd-Control

For a significant part of our playthrough, we think this build fairs pretty good for crowd-control. However, that is to say, that if you are good with character maneuverability in the game. If not, you will need to work on it. Familiarize yourself with how to keep moving and attacking using melee-only attacks before making a run for this build. Otherwise, dealing with crowded enemies with fists-only will become an overwhelming task.

Boss Fights

This is where we think our disappointment greatly came from while testing this build. Before the update, Amara’s melee build was abysmal while taking out the bosses. However, not much changed even after the update, as getting real close to bosses for the attacks can sometimes prove devastating. We did not mean to implore that this build is outright useless. It’s just the playstyle gets tedious while fighting bosses.

Overall Survivability

Amara’s melee build gets incredible support from her Brawl skill tree. Most of the skills mentioned above favor survivability by granting damage reduction, health regeneration, and an overall increase in the health bar.

Final Analysis

For better or for worse, it all boils down to how good you are at playing with Amara or using melee as the only source of offense in the game. However, throughout our playthrough, we noticed a fair share of pros and cons in the build, and here is our final analysis of the build.

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

• All of the gun weapons are neglected from selection, and playstyle is limited to punches only – 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
• Playing with other players dealing ranged damage ruins fun

Now that you know everything about Borderlands 3 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.