Another point worth mentioning is that dying as Gaige can seriously screw up your game. The fact that she loses all Anarchy stacks after dying means that she will lose her only damage boost. It's really frustrating. She's also the worst character to farm bosses with since you'll also lose your stacks by saving and quiting. I just can't understand why With Claws was placed in the Anarchy tree either. If you are within melee range from your target, you're better off by just shooting him with your gun at a high stack count. Anyways, excellent video. Maybe you should do one about the most underpowered character in BL? Don't get me wrong, all characters are capable of effective mobbing and soloing raid bosses, but it's no secret that some are just superior. Or maybe make a video about the most gear-dependent character? Salvador maybe the ultimate source of power in the end-game, but it was really frustrating to level him up because of his dependancy on certain gear.

Wilhelm is a pet build done right.

Honestly I love Gaige a lot. But yeah, her design is crap. There's a bunch of things I would do to buff her up and rework her. The shock tree i would basically ditch and redesign except for Electrical Burn and WDT, both of which need buffs. I think Deathtrap has potential, too. He just needs some reworks on his A.I. Few things I'd do to him: -make him focus on your reticle. He should attack what you're attacking. The electric laser should be saved for flying enemies. -speed up his animations. He's so slow. Both in movement and attacking and using special abilities. -improve his special ability targeting (Buck up recharging enemies' shields is stupid. Why is that even a thing?) -Make his melee attacks not knock things back. It's hard enough to aim with anarchy, I don't need enemies getting pushed around as well. For the Anarchy tree, I'd move Discord to the capstone and increase its numbers just a hair for moving it down so far. Airborne anarchist can stay too, but it should scale in damage based off the number of stacks you have when it procs. With Claws is... shite. It should really be a deathtrap skill, making him interact with anarchy stacks more in some way, perhaps making his attacks stack anarchy in addition to your kills and reloads. That way you've got another Anarchy engine while Discord is up. The Nth Degree, in my opinion, should work like Maya's Chain Reaction. Every Nth bullet should replicate and bounce, which also stacks Nth, so sustained fire results in an exponential number of bullets flying everywhere, going into the whole 'anarchy' theme. BFF tree is a conundrum. It's got the same problem as the Anarchy tree, the top half is pretty good but it gets worse as you go down. The only problem is that I don't really think it's got an overall theme outside of "general survivability". Some DoT reduction in this tree would be nice, and maybe some more health focused skills, (lifesteal maybe?) Gaige is a mess. I love her, but she's a real big MESS.

As someone who loves Gaige and spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours with her, I almost completely agree (My only real disagreement is that Make It Sparkle actually pretty dramatically increases his damage, but it's at the bottom of a garbage skill tree so it's not worth it, and Deathtrap refuses to melee all of the toughest enemies so it's pretty wasted anyway). Gaige feels like an utterly broken character in the worst way. Once you take Anarchy, Blood-soaked Shields and Close Enough, congrats - Gaige isn't evolving beyond that, ever. Welcome to endgame. Welcome to her only real defining, good characteristics. Like you said, it can be very fun and unique and interesting and I think she's a really cool character, but, as a summon, Deathtrap sucks compared to alternatives, as a Gaige action skill, he sucks, and is entirely in disharmony with her, and the skills for him are largely a giant waste.

the whole point of her kit is to let deathtrap do everything while she sits back and sprays at a wall for 20 seconds. She has a lot of cool ideas but i dont like her character overall

Some things: Make it Sparkle is a multiplicative damage increase for DT. So it's better than you think. Yeah, I wouldn't go out of my way for it, but is a good skill. Better Half has a bit of synergy with Anarchy by making you empty the mag faster. Anarchy is not required. My mobbing build is a no-Anarchy shock/DT build, and I do just fine with it. Yes, I'm doing much less damage than I could be, but it takes all the frustration of losing your stacks out of the equation, thus making her more enjoyable for me. More Pep actually has a good affect with Interspersed Outburst when both are boosted by the Leg Catalyst. With both at 10/5, each stack has a 24% chance of slagging. The chance for Electrical Burn to proc is per tick. So each time you see a shock DoT number pop off the enemy, it has a 20%/40% chance to proc. A similar skill (Wilhelm's Cold War) is only a chance to proc per DoT application, so EB has a better proc chance than what it is said on the card. The Leg Anarchist having UF and Myelin is actually better than you think. A high Anarchy build (350-400 stacks) is naturally up close and personal. And considering how strong enemies are at high level, they're doing quite a bit of damage to you (I'm thinking of Bloodshot Stronghold while typing this, so envision that as well). Yes, BSS may instantly fill your shields, but you'll most likely be getting hit a lot by enemies (as well as them backpedaling). Myelin and UF give you the shield boosts to keep you up when moving from enemy to enemy, but the 70% movement speed helps you to reach them quicker to actually be able to hit them. So while it's not obvious, there is some synergy with the Leg Anarchist.

Agree 100%. death trap is very underwhelming imo. Most of her skills are either trash or don’t do much. Probably my least favorite character in borderlands entirely

Subscribing. While I'm not quite at the end game yet (I know I'm very late to the party), I've already learned a LOT within the last half hour watching your vids. Good stuff man. Good stuff.

Make it sparkle is actually amazing. It actually doubles Deathtrap's damage, and if you slag him then he becomes a slag-dispenser for you. The problem is that the rest of the tree is sparkly garbage, and the only good skills are the last three and maybe electrical burn for healing with dots and a moxxi weapon

The annoying part about gaiges slag skill is that the counter gets reset when you hit environment items like barrels or skag piles which i frequently do when running around to stack up anarchy on the way so if you arent careful you wont even open up an engagement with full stacks of it

As a Gaige main, I can't help but agree on this list. I hardly ever deploy Deathtrap because he's a complete nuisance half the time, especially when playing co-op. It's okay if he's blocking my shots while in FFYL because he might get a second wind for me, but he fucks other players over way too often. And I've been surviving just fine without him with my build anyway. And on that topic, I was wondering if you think Gaige is viable for soloing raid bosses? My current build with Magic Missile, Grog Nozzle, DPUH, and various Fibbers (mostly shock, though), plus Neogenator (going for Evolution eventually), Legendary Anarchist, and pistol/shotgun Blood of the Ancients is great for mobbing, but I haven't really tried to make a raid boss build for her yet. Do you think there is a possibility that one could work, even if I have to rely on prestacking Anarchy, or should I just get all the raid boss drops with Axton? Because decent Gaige builds are haaaaaaard.

Came back to Borderlands 2 in 2019 and have been playing through using your skill guides for help. I know I'm extremely late on this, but I've started to see that Gaige has a lot of mini-synergies. Blood Soaked Shields + Cooking Up Trouble + Discord (Maybe Myelin) Blood Soaked Shields' major drawback is the health it eats up. After 14 kills it will push you under health gate. Using a Coach Gun, Cooking Up Trouble can synergize with it to negate its major downside and allow you to keep your shields up near constantly to protect from the 'death by a thousand cuts' and that one big blast that health gates you. Discord can be useful if you aren't using a Coach Gun or similar single shot damage dealer since it allows you to get back to full between fights and keep that one health gate per engagement at the ready. Stacking the regen of Cooking Up Trouble and Discord also lets you heal 5% of your health a second. VERY strong regen outside of UVHM that can easily carry you through some hard times. Anarchy + Close Enough + The Nth Degree Anarchy ramps your damage waaaaay up but also makes you super inaccurate. Close enough and The Nth Degree both help with this problem in different ways that feed into each other. One out of every five bullets from The Nth Degree is still a 20% damage increase, and Close Enough makes sure it procs by getting more shots on target. Upshot Robot + Robot Rampage + Annoyed Android I got this combo setup while doing Tiny Tina's DLC in playthrough one... Good lord. Maybe it isn't perfect for UVHM, but it is amazing at level 35. Death Trap had 28 stacks of Upshot Robot after one fight, which means he was rocking an extra 140 seconds of duration and 92% melee damage. Annoyed Android allows him to get from enemy to enemy quick and Robot Rampage is an AoE hack n' slash spin to win that can take out multiple enemies. They really feed into each other and make him threatening... He started making it hard to get Blood Soaked Shields to proc, though... He stole all my kills!! Best Friends Forever and Ordered Chaos synergize together rather well in different little trinities where two perks in Ordered Chaos benefit massively from one in Best Friends Forever. Best of all?... You can just take the three I mentioned and nothing else from Best Friends Forever if you really wanted to... Little Big Trouble is awful... Myelin is the only skill I'd take. Strength of Five Gorillas just isn't enough damage when Upshot Robot stacks so quickly... DoTs need to be buffed for Little Big Trouble to be a good tree. As is it's just sitting on a garbage system for dealing garbage damage...

I have been brain storming a lot of cool things they could do with gaige. Mayhaps it could all revolve around death trap. Death trap could be some dual weilding badass robot that "brings anarchy to pandora". The longer death trap is out, the more anarchy you get. Reloading and killing increase the amount of stacks you get. This also applies to death trap. Death trap could fly be like a humanoid robot that flies around with a jet pack and could have some skills that maybe lift gaige up and she has her own jet pack, in this form your shots release mini explosions and give you more anarchy. In her deathtrap based tree there could be a bonus called order that when deathtrap is on cooldown you gain increased accuracy and fire rate and reload speed, working the same way anarchy would in this build. Perhaps death trap can throw a copy of your grenade, have your shield, hell even some rocket barrages and lasers or something, maybe once a certain amount of anarchy is reached, death trap comes to the ground and burns down the establishment, causing fire damage around him. Shock gaige could work into this with a sort of "panic" skill, where the more anarchy you have and the lower health the enemy is, the more "shocked" the enemies becomes, taking increase shock damage with the possibility of establishment "burning" down, causing enemies to take fire damage as well and explode when killed. Maybe a capstone in this tree where shock damage has a chance to stun enemies based on the amount of anarchy you have. The anarchy focused tree could revolve around deathtrap, increasing stack gain rate, add more bonuses such as movespeed, bullets ricochet everywhere, etc. The cap stone could be something about weakening the establishment with more anarchy with a kill skill similars to aurelias ice tree cap stone, but instead of ice it is slag, to weaken the establishment after an "example" of anarchy. the more stacks you have at the time of the kill, your guns deal bonus slag damage and have a chance to slag based on the amount of anarchy you have.

Her right and middle capstones aren't bad at all. If you go for a Deathtrap or elemental build the middle one adds a lot of damage to DT and if you go for a melee build the right one is the most important skill to pick up. Oh and I just have to mention it. I find Gaige's 'story' to be completely unnecessary to be honest. A girl who made a robot that killed some girl at her school and now is on the run from the police and SOMEHOW got in a rocket to a border planet that is filled with psychos and became a Vault Hunter? WHAT? xD Also apparently she is 18 years old, which is hard to believe, but I guess it's necessary to claim that. Her personality is funny and all and I like her but her backstory is complete trash imho, even more than Timothy's. But there is still one backstory and personality I dislike more. And that also is Salvador. I dislike the class and the character itself. Some dude has fun hurting people and thought it would be a good idea to search for some alien stuff. I mean Brick is probably the same, but at least he has a cool personality where Sal is just... retarded. xD

You'll notice how a lot of people who like Gaige like her character more than design. I don't think she'll be a playable character again, but if she does I hope Gearbox puts as much effort into designing her skills as they did the characters in Pre-sequel.

How do you feel that the 8 extra skill points from the Fight For Sanctuary DLC possibly fix her? And then how would each of the characters do with those extra points? Or did you already do a video about that already?

This video might be old, but still relevant. I highly recommend trying out the BL2 Redux mod as it really improves Gaige by a ton, like removing the need to stack Anarchy for example.

I said this on someone else’s video; but it might be a cool idea to bring back the old Vault Hunters from Borderlands and Borderlands 2 (also some other characters brought back\added like Clap-Trap [just change some skills since zero gravity wouldn’t be a thing anymore possibly] or Moxxi) but just reworked their skill trees to reflect the time that has passed on Pandora and their experiences throughout the game as the grew and their surroundings changed, for an example Mordecai lost Blood-wing but has Talon, so if they took his skill tree from Borderlands but just kind of shaped it to feel more like a Borderlands 2 or Pre-Sequel skill tree but changed some skills due to his new companionship with his new bird, obviously maybe some sniping skills as well. Another example is Gaige more specifically her Death-Trap; her Death-Trap is a high school science experiment and she had to flee to Pandora after the ‘incident’ with her classmate so there are probably some things she could still work out or work on with her Death-Trap one can only think that as she grew up on Pandora and experienced more that would change her outlook and need for certain things with her Death-Trap, maybe a little more offensive approach to battle or eager to help in boss fight (personally I’d replace his shield replenishment skill with something that allows his to Digi-splode but grant a Second Wind to everyone in the vicinity of his Digi-splosion.) (Something I don’t think would be necessary but something I’d like to see for some humor is a 1 point skill for Axton maybe a capstone, but something that gives his Turret the personality that they discussed in the recap story telling in the Pre-Sequel during the Holodome DLC [“Sure! I’m thinking… femme fatale, with a no-excuses attitude and a thirst for blood! Likes romantic novels and bubble baths]. -Gaige

My big dislike with the Anarchist class mod is that it doubles down on the accuracy penalty. Gaige's Blue Tina Com is decent, and Demonite recently did an AR build with the Jill of all Trades class mod. Deathtrap's synergy could have been improved if the skills boosting him did things like also boosting Gaige better (somewhat like battlefront with Axton's turret). Sterner stuff should have been better damage reduction, but only while DT is out to make a bit more sense. Strength of 5 gorillas should have only did melee for deathtrap, and a different bonus for Gaige. I feel small tweaks like that would have made her a better pet class, as opposed to anarchy with a pet tossed in. Heck you can play Jack as a pet class better than Gaige if you try, but that's not what makes Jack good. That said, I still love Gaige. But her high anarchy call outs get to me, so I almost never spec into cyberpunk. 150 stacks is enough imo.

Desthtrap can sometimes derp out with Buck Up and restore an enemy's shield instead of your own.

I understand that this is a rather old video, but has your opinion changed now that many of Gaige's worst skills have been buffed? Death From Above is actually usable in certain builds now and her elemental builds are even more viable in most situations. I honestly think that Nisha from TPS is the worst designed character now. She has a ridiculous amount of fire rate buffs but her only way to regen ammo is a lackluster skill. Her AS is an aimbot and critting without actually even hitting a critical spot? Really? I also feel like her right and middle skill trees have no focus. The left skill tree is about survival and melee, while the rest just have random skills.

Interesting video. I agree with pretty much everything but I can see why GBX didn't want to buff the elemental dmg too much outside of Anarchy since I think Anarchy also buffs elemental damage so there is a balancing issue. Gaige can pretty much tear through DP on OP8 already just with Anarchy so increased elemental damage on top of that might have been too much. I think it would have been interesting to have buffed the elemental damage and replace one of the Anarchy stacking skills in Ordered Chaos with a Maelstrom like skill in the elemental tree. I guess the entire elemental Athena concept is an updated version of what they may have tried to do with Anarchy and Gaige's elemental tree.

I enjoy how Axton's trees got pre-randumbized, so when I use that mod, his skills might get put in an arrangement with literally any logic.

I think they probably should have released Krieg first, (or have released both at once, it doesn't really matter) and then in the timeframe between the two try to make a decently scaling pet class, because the concept of Gaige is in itself decent. The execution of said concept is rather lackluster and almost ramshackle, coming from a Mechro main. The shock skill tree should never have had Strength of 5 G's, and instead there should have been a tree *solely* dedicated to Deathtrap. The fact that his scripting prioritizes his support skills over his DPS is bad and I'd be wasting time arguing in its favor. If I were to have made her trees, I'd have done as follows: *1:* Best Friends Forever would have had all of the Deathtrap related buffs, with Close Enough and Cooking Up Trouble in Ordered Chaos. *2* All around buffs to the Elemental tree, 30% increase with 5 in Wires Don't Talk, etc, etc. *3* Make Ordered Chaos itself better than it is now, maybe remove the Death From Above skill and replace it with a bullet speed increase or maybe a kill skill, and just make With Claws her default melee, and remove its consumption of stacks. I would go on, but it's already a damn thesis paper for a comment on a 4 year old video on why the first expansion character in the series is poorly designed, which she is. Or was at the point of the video's release. Point being, she was shafted. But hey, even if the character is rough and yet is still viable, that's a win in my books

If the shield one gave you a special shield slot for dt that would be great. In fact if they could base a tree around attaching items to dt, and give it a neat design of ramshackle inventory slots basically bolted/duct taped onto her menu, I could get into it. She does break the 4th wall a lot after all. Maybe the ability to give him mounted guns as auto-turrets, dt specific coms that boost his skills which would normally stay 1/1 for Gaige, and grenade mods that he could throw every now and then. Give dt his own skill tree, that can be boosted by his own personal coms. I would have found it rad. On top of making his AI work... Then if her shock tree had bigger boosts, and more electrical burn style things that would make shock able to apply all the dots. Move make it sparkle to the dt tree, and maybe give her something that causes dots to randomly spread, so you could apply everything to one guy then random other enemies catch fire, begin corroding, or get slagged. Add a bit more of that chaos. Make the whole tree highly focused on dots applied via shock weapons. As for ordered chaos, I'd say move close enough onto it (Granted, with a dt tree we're already doing some moving...), shore up nth degree with either an increasing percentage chance to bounce once boostable to 100%, or a 100% chance to bounce once but scale up the damage of the reflected shot also boostable to 100%. And keep the capstone as a melee override, but change it to an anarchy stack steroid. Something that adds like 200 stacks that quickly decay and cannot go above maximum. So you can land a special melee attack, instantly bump your numbers with false stacks, then use those to more easily build real stacks as the fake ones drop off. And if you kill an enemy with the override, a portion of the false stacks are real.

This really helped me. I was wondering why Gaige sucked on OP 8. I speced into a lot of skills that were really shitty.

As a krieg player who benefits from not having shields, fuck the buck up skill. Fucks me over all the time ;_;

Her terrible design is what makes me love unofficial patch so much, it makes my shock/BFF Gaige less frustrating and restricted.

It really pains me that she's so poorly put together as she's legitimately one of my absolute favorite characters in the whole Borderlands series. I do find Conference Chaos to be fun (basically where spec half/half into Shock Gaige and Anarchy Gaige and just go crazy with a Shock Conference Call) but I do genuinely wish a lot of her skills were at the very least buffed if not rearranged and/or replaced. One comment I saw either on another video or in a Reddit suggested that "Rational Anarchist" could either give more Anarchy or FULL Anarchy and be put as either the Capstone or cost more Skill Points to max it out. My Personal Suggestion would be to actually not swap DT for Anarchy but instead make Anarchy affect both Gaige AND DT and move "With Claws" over to Deathtrap to increase his Damage and Survivability due to it's Healing Properties

Can I ask you a question? How in the world do you make anarchy an action skill because I don't see that working.

Gaige's big problems: Too little movement speed for With Claws to be viable. Maybe GB could have made Annoyed Android affect you while DT is out. No weapon swap skills. GB could have incorporated swap speed into Smaller, Lighter, Faster. Too few slagging skills. Maybe The Stare or Explosive Clap could be slag skills? That would make them worth taking (as long as the Stare got fixed). Slow wind ups on DT gamechangers. Just cut off frames.

top 5 worst designed characters 1. salvador 2. salvador 3. salvador 4. salvador 5. salvador

The way I think of it is “how hard of a time would you have with each character throughout the game if you knew zero mechanics and haven’t watched 20 tip and guide videos on them” essentially if you were noob how hard is it to make a character come together naturally. For me personally gaige flows the least because the only build I could make work is anarchy, like you said hardly any synergy and you almost have to be an expert on the game to beat uvhm with her. To be completely honest I only started having fun with gaige when her super speed glitch was discovered. Managing anarchy is not fun, watching deathtrap be a doorknob is not fun, and seeing enemy regen outpace electric dot is just disappointing. You could say get good but the fact of the matter is I just never had as hard of a time playing with any other character. More power to anyone that loves the character but I can completely understand why someone would pick gaige as the worst designed.

I beat the game without anarchy my first play though ever

Annoyed Android actually bud DT and make him orbit around enemy sometime ,it feel like it increase DT's movement speed but didn't adjust his turn rate

You're missing several synergies between the trees. A DT kill procs UF and EE, the latter of which makes WDT - which synergizes with Anarchy - more potent. UF works like Maya's Inertia in defeating DOTs while the movement speed is amazing for agressive play. DOTs work well through OP8 which I know you know. Switching shields takes a tenth of a second. Overall you sound tentative, and frankly with good reason. I'm not angling for an argument and I agree with you on many points, Gaige's design really is bad in some cases. If it could be improved for a possible return that would be awesome. For now, just avoid the bad skills like with the others.

Gaige is for people who just want to relax and have chaotic fun. It’s a shame more people can’t understand that

The Nth degree is the exact oppposite of diminishing returns

I really like Gaige's voice acting, one of the best and probly my fave. I have Interspersed Outburst at 11 boosted by a class mod right now and it's frustrating that sometimes it still doesn't slag :/ Magic Missiles ftw tho of course. I keep hearing Death from Above is useless, haven't tried it, but I would love if it was useful, she's so fun to jump around maps with. I'm currently leveling and farming for her all Vladof gear (+shields and coms) for an allegiance build but I'm scared I might be crestfallen in disappointment with DfA. Gonna try to do a Maliwan/Catalyst build also- Thunderball Fists, etc, nova/leg shields, should work nicely and try to keep the pearlescent Storm doable, it gets no love. Bandit allegiance, Hyperion allegiance, ahhh

I feel like Gaige is something of an anti-power-gaming character. She is built for, and excels at the casual level, and her best skills for UVHM and OP levels are really easy to get early on if you want them. If anything, a shitty skill tree design makes your decisions easier. Do you go for the obviously better skills for efficiency, or challenge yourself with a niche build? Play around with some gimmicky bells and whistles for giggles? Poorly designed, yes, but she's also fun, snarky, and really easy, and I kinda feel like the devs at least partially wanted that. She is more engaging than Sal, at any rate; at least her autopilot has more layers to it than gear and mashing your triggers (and MAYBE throwing a grenade).

... agree that Deathtrap doesn't synergise well with most Gaiges skills ...some skills fell awkward to take ... for skills mostly its a problem of bad scaling [not uncommon with other characters], not the skill as such .... if you start with middle tree it works nice in first playthrough [and no other character gets slag earlier] and later you add anarchy tree... you should better compare her with Axton not Sal - they have lots of similarities in class mods and skills ...

*Anarchy is OP as fuck* Its like Money Shot on Steroids,its just not as powerful because requires time to acquire. I cant understand why nobody talks about this The fact that there is a INSANE amout of stacks,and if you are that powerful why would you even want to play in coop?

I think Nisha might take this slot from Gaige. A lot of the skills you want on Nisha builds are buried in her three different trees, which kind of forces you to grab skills you don't want or don't need to get to those other skills that will work for your build. Also, a lot of her skills play against other skills in her trees, like Magnificent Six with her skill that adds 3 ammo, or a boost to shield capacity in a melee tree.

Also an FYI, sometimes deathtrap does the shield beam on an enemy(it doesnt actually do anything), meaning he sits there while doing it, and the time it takes him to stop the animation, and then fly over to something. He also does this to you with the Fire Beam (i dont remember its name, i never take it) and while it doesnt hurt you, its the same as above, he sits there lasering you, meaning hes not doing damage to anything. Deathtrap as a separate character, or hell, make deathtrap controllable for your action skill, while gaige sits on his shoulder (like several game art has shown) and center Gaiges skills around that, would be fucking sick. Not gonna lie, at first (as a gaige player) i was kinda offended, but your right, her design is shit, regardless of how fun or how much damage she can do, and to think, some proper balancing of anarchy to make it less of a glaring choice, and just really good buffs to alot of the other skills would 100% fix this, sad they squandered such a cool concept.

6:26 "451 more degrees of fire." is that a reference to Farenheit 451?

I agree 100%. There is only one way to play Gaige. Her Action skill is shitty, her left tree is worthless, and her shock tree is pathetically weak. So, the only REAL way to play her is Anarchy, which is COMPLETELY broken. The only character who is almost as bad as Gaige is Sal, but not because he's badly designed--just because he's such a lame, cheap, overpowered character.

I don't understand why you can't gear up deathtrap.

I think money shot is fine on Sal, it's inconceivable that makes him op.

a deathtrap vault hunter would be super fun!

Girlfriend mode doesn't imply women are bad at video games. It's a reference to the fact that Console\pc games are a male dominant hobby so you often have trouble playing some games with your SO because they're completely new. I mean have you tried giving an adult who's never played a game a keyboard or controller to play an FPS? It's all about how you interpret the statement, and considering Gearbox is pretty SJW, the "Girls are bad at video games LUL!" interpretation is pretty unlikely along with being very uncharitable. Bugs me when people take the worst possible interpretation of what somebody said.

All characters in my opinion are fun to play as

worst designed character for me is Brick. useless action skill and not much in his skilltree to bring him up to all the other bl1 characters. admittedly in that one Lilith overshadowed the others by an even greater amount than Salvador ultimately exceeds the bl2 team but atleast Roland and Mordecai (my fave) could do stuff with their skills.

The worst offender of Gaige is that I love her anarchy skill so much but she is so shittily designed. She would easily be my favourite character if she were better designed. DT is almost useless at high levels, some of her skills are actually downgrades, she takes too long to be useful with the anarchy stacking, and so forth. I love anarchy though, so it hurts me a lot.

is it just me or do other people only use DoT to "see" enemies through walls

Can't use an Infinity Pistol if you use the Ordered Chaos tree. Smaller, Lighter, Faster reduces the magazine size to zero. Why it's paired with 1/1 Anarchy is beyond me.

Very late to this, but I love her design in theory. Her tier 1's is basically a teenage girl who doesn't know how fight, and is just spraying and praying; And then Death Trap acting as her bouncer, and theoritically the competent fighter out of both of them. But Holy, Deathtrap just doesn't work.

I was actually really surprised: there are op8 melee builds for gaige that work! Not to say she is well designed, I agree that she is poorly designed. I'm pretty sure every gaige build is centred around Anarchy, which i think you state that.

Wilhelm and Lady Hammerlock are much better designd than Gaige.

Hey Derch, you are a good feller, but full of Baloney. Grin!! To be fair the developers even as they nerfed the Bee have also buffed Gaige and Deathtrap. In the new and better game Gaige is very, very good. In higher levels you just learn to make educated builds. Avoid things like the Stare, do not use Shock and Aaaauuuuugggg as it is worthless and will only blow up an unseen barrel and kill you. Forget shields like the Black Hole and other so called wonderful things. Use a good Corrosive shield or even the Antagonist. The antagonist slags enemies like crazy(be careful it will slag you too) Only thing I do not like about Gaige even though she is my favorite is all that screaming........they do need to tone that down some. It is no fun but with a Sham and a Shock Norfleet.........you can face roll the game. Unlimited rocket ammo it has a name called Shamfleeting. Not a lot of fun and requires no strategy but is super powerful . Yea just learn to make educated builds...........and for experienced players you do not need skills such as the one that bounces your missed shots into an enemy.......hey we know how to aim......Grin, we do not need shock and awwwwgggg and find it dangerous, the stare is a waste, but the CLAP is awesome and enemy body parts go flying all over a room. So give me an Antagonist Shield, a Magic Missile, and Interspersed Outburst and turn me loose.........Lol. Give me a Little Evie shock pistol and look out, everything dies. Even a shock resistant shock Nomad will go down with the Little Evie it just overpowers them. Or if a Binary Thunderball Fist drops........three shots can take out an entire room. To be fair perhaps in the beginning Gaige was weak.......but lots of things have been changed from the Nerf of the Bee to the fact that Gaige and Deathtrap have been mostly fixed. For example he no longer renews the shield of an enemy.........no longer just stands there wondering what to do and just conducts business with great gusto. Grin. Personally I find Zero hard to play on high levels. Mainly because I like sniper Zero and despise Melee.......so we all have favorites. Myra with a sniper(Pimpernel) and phase lock, is an entirely different game..........so........yea we all have favorites and mine is Gaige. They just need to tone down all that screaming and she would be perfect. So think the Gunzerker and the fibber is good.........I can kill Hyperius just as fast with a couple singularity grenades and a corrosive Sandhawk. Bye bye Hyperius. Want to see Terramorphous go down in ten seconds, a couple slag grenades/The Bee and a Flakker shotgun.......bye, bye graboid. It is all about learning the game and the development of strategy for whichever character you have chosen to play. Cheers!!

It's kinda funny how both his favorite and least favorite are pet classes.

I'm kinda surprised Gaige wasn't a base game character since the whole idea of her is to give completely casual players an easy time and let an ai kill everything for you. It's weird that she was added after once people had a chance to get good at the game. Sal is the ultimate crutch character but he's good at everything. Gaige is just good for passive mobbing and not much else. I'm not sure why anyone plays her.

In defense of Gaige, in my personal experience she's a raid boss killer(that is if you have the slayer of terra com), however i must admit, it took me 6 months to get to level 61 with Gaige, whereas it only took me about 2 1/2 weeks with Maya :p

what a different mic from the one now

man I love Gaige but you're right.

what happend to scooter?

Surprised it isn't Sal, so broken that there is no need to use another character, except maybe to have the fun of the game being slightly challenging rather than not challenging at all.

"DOTs don't do shit." That's the first time you've made a statement I disagree with, Derch. It *might* be true in UVHM, but not before it. I found them more useful in TVHM than in Normal.

Buckup and hellborn krieg/melee zero = Ebil.. Please for the love of Jack do not use buckup.

Gaige may be designed bad but I love her backstory.

Not Mordecai (Hunter) and Bloodwing? I guess not bad design just massively underpowered...

I love Deathtrap

Seriously Gaige is like my main on Borderlands 2, even though i first started out with Axton. I switched from Axton to Gaiga cause i hated Axton skills and i still kind of do. I seriously don't know what the hell to do with him upon specting which freaking irratates me. I have a way much easier time with Gaige because of Anarchy, and combination it with the Sham shield, and The Norfleet, you'll gain crazy amount of Anarchy stacks and you can receive Rocket ammo back from the Sham shield effect. Plus i have a relic that increase explosive damage, so i usually run around with The Norfleet (Explosive) and the Unkempt Harold pistol.

brick is the worst

No really suprised she has a 3 poorly designed skill trees and a bad action skill. Still fun to play though.

Most summoner characters suck in video games in general,when i discovered that she was a summoner i knew there was a HIGH chance for the character to be bad.

Deathtrap is like a really bad DPS player :D

i am going to have to disagree because playing gaige is really fun with any skill tree and i dont care about op 8. Mainly after playing every character i would have to say that salvador is the worst designed because he is boring at lower levels and you get moneyshot and nothing really changes between his skill trees

I love your idea of having Deathtrap as a vault hunter, make him a high health melee focused character.

I feel like shock Gaige would have been THE SHIT in presequel, because of the massive shields enemies get in TVHM and above...

WTF IS A DOT?!?!?

A useless action skill automatically makes any character the worst one. So yes, Gaige sucks.

that's your opinion but it is obviously not a fact imo Sal Is the worst designed vault hunter he just has dmg&rate of fire skills that just boost overall dps with no thought behind them just dps skills slapped up together and done no thought or playstyle behind them whatsoever.

I changed opinions btw

Gaige is one of the most powerful characters. How is she bad...

In terms of distractions, Axton's turret is better than Deathtrap Elemental power?, Maya Melee damage? Krieg and Zer0 Killing everything that moves? Salvador. As someone who plays Gaige, I feel that the anarchist mod is really the only mod I can bother using without it feeling like I'm lacking power in one department or another. Her middle tree is pretty much useless, and anarchy/close enough is really the only real that makes her stand out. Gaige's melee is also bugged, enemy HP regen on UVHM completely counters her melee damage. I find the time investment it takes to get stacks is the reason why I play Gaige. I can play for hours and get stacks, where other characters I can pick up, play, die and move on to another character without losing anything worth while. TL;DR I play gaige for stacking anarachy and I find it's fun.