New skill trees revealed for Borderlands 3’s Amara and FL4K

Gearbox Software has unveiled two of the new skill trees that will be added to Borderlands 3 with the release of the Designer’s Cut DLC.

First up is Amara’s Enlightened Force skill tree. This new tree grants Amara access to Cryo elemental attacks and a new skill called Phaseflare. This new skill creates an orb of elemental energy that can be pushed around and detonated using melee attacks. The orb will deal damage to any enemies nearby.

“Up until now Amara had ‘fire and forget’ Action Skills, but with the new Phaseflare, she’s capable of even more damage when properly managing the skill,” creative director Graeme Timmins said. “This also opens up a whole new set of Action Skill Active Anointments that previously hadn’t synergized too well with her other skills.”

Amara also gains access to a number of new passives, including Trust in Yourself, Combo Breaker, and Clear the Mind. Get more details about these passives, courtesy of Gearbox, below:

• Trust in Yourself is a huge boon when Amara wants to fight up close and personal. Whenever an enemy breaks Amara’s shield, she gains increased Reload Speed, Charge Speed, and Weapon Speed, with doubled bonuses if her shield was broken by a melee attack.
• Combo Breaker makes it so that killing an enemy with melee damages reduces Amara’s remaining Action Skill cooldown by half. When combined with the boosted melee damage effects from other passives, you can chain together skills almost nonstop.
• Clear the Mind is a must-have Kill Skill for tougher enemies you need to freeze, burn, electrocute, or poison in a hurry. After killing an enemy, Amara’s attacks ignore all elemental resistances for a short time (this doesn’t override elemental immunities, however).

The second skill tree detailed was FL4K’s Trapper tree. Trapper gives FL4K three new variants of the Loader pet and the Gravity Snare action skill. The ION Loader has a powerful sniper rifle, the BUL Loader comes with a shotgun, and the WAR Loader has radiation missiles. While Gravity Snare will toss nearby enemies into the air before slamming them back down, interrupting their attacks.

As with Amara’s new tree, the Trapper tree includes a number of new passives, which are detailed below:

• Take This! gives FL4K’s pet a copy of their shield, which can turn your companion into a nigh-unkillable tank.
• Monkey Do gives FL4K’s pet increased critical hit damage, but the real power comes from its other passive effect. Whenever FL4K scores a critical hit on enemies, their pet’s next attack is a guaranteed critical hit—and best of all, this passive has a short cooldown.
• Capacitance is FL4K’s failsafe survival skill: when activated, FL4K gains greatly increased Shield Capacity for a short time and immediately begins recharging shields. With its short cooldown, proper use of Capacitance can make you practically immortal.

The Designer’s Cut DLC launches November 10th for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, and includes new skill trees for all four Vault Hunters as well as the Arms Race game mode.