Borderlands 2
Strategy & Tips

Weapon Types:

Click here for info about legendary weapons.

Shotguns - They are usually slow, have small magazines, and have limited range. Their killing power can normally be matched or exceeded by other weapons if you have a good armory. A rare exception would be a shotgun with (relative to most shotguns) high damage, high accuracy (75+), high fire rate (3+), large magazine (8+), and preferably, a short reload time and an elemental effect.

The legendary Sledge's Shotgun can take out many enemies with one hit for 5 or 6 levels above its stated level. As mentioned above, the Frakker is also an impressive weapon when used at its intended range. The Conference Call is amusing. It "pings" enemies in front and to the sides all at once and with high accuracy. Nevertheless, other legendary weapons are just as effective (or more so) without having to carry a shotgun and spend eridium to ups its ammo capacity.

Rifles - Lower level rifles are much more powerful than lower level machine guns. Around level 20 or so, the machine guns start getting more powerful.

Sub Machine Guns - Rifles and machine guns serve pretty much the same purpose, so if you have a rifle which is better than a sub, you might as well dump the sub to make room in your backpack. An exception is if you are in a prolonged battle, such as the Hyperion Slaughter, where you might run out of ammo: having both effectively doubles your ammo.

Pistols - Some pistols have damage, accuracy, and fire rates better than same level rifles and subs, in which case you can dump the inferior rifles and subs.

For example, you won't see any rifles or subs between levels 8 and 15 in our weapons list because the legendary Unkempt Harold is better than anything else available.

The level 19 Caustic Infinity is a very powerful weapon because it combines fairly rapid fire with corrosion and never having to stop to reload (ammo is infinite). Combined with a level 18 shield with only 664 damage protection but with insanely high regeneration time (242), a low delay (3.02), a huge nova damage (1415) with a wide radius (1136), you can wade into the middle of robots with the Caustic Infinity and wreak havoc knowing that even if your shields and health get depleted, the novas and the continued effect of the corrosion will kill most things nearby to give you Second Wind.

The legendary level 20 Rapid Infinity is a little less awesome because it has no elemental effects but its wider spread is handy for fast moving targets like stalkers or a bunch of skags coming at you.

The legendary Thunderball Fists produces most impressive electrical damage. It is great for killing varkids (those "invisible assholes"), but it will also take down robots as good as or better than a corrosive weapon. It is also surprisingly effective at taking down Crytalisks.

Some pistols have damage and accuracy and scopes almost as good as sniper rifles. In the Hyperion Slaughter, where you are likely to run out of sniper ammo, an accurate pistol with a relatively high rate of fire and a scope makes a good backup for the sniper rifle for which you may run out of ammo. Beware of the Hyperion pistols which have very high damage ratings and supposed accuracy but which wave around while you are trying to aim them through a scope, making them worthless for anything but sustained fire.

Sniper Rifles - Kill at a distance without getting killed back; what's not to love?

Launchers - Because of slow fire rate, small magazines, and long reload times, you usually need to use these only for the toughest enemies. Rarely do you find Rockets laying around, so you usually need an ammo machine around to restock unless you have the Sham shield and KerBlaster rifle as mentioned above.

Also, you can get around slow reloads by bringing up your wrist computer, swapping out the launcher for another weapon, then swapping back. When you exit the wrist computer, your launcher will be loaded and read to go.

Grenade Mods - My preference is for homing grenades which split up, seek out the enemies, explode, and burn or corrode. The most awesome one is the legendary corrosive Homing Pandemic. Like a pandemic disease, after it explodes, it spreads and explodes on anyone or anything it finds, including you if you get too close. It can take out a whole army of bots with one grenade despite its relative low-looking damage rating.

Bouncing grenades are hard to control and if they miss an enemy, are just a waste of grenades. But I see videos where people are using them, so suit yourself. A Rolling Thunder grenade mod explodes each time it bounces, making it good for crowds or enemies rushing towards you. You still need to be careful of bounce-back though.

Transfusion grenades (which give you enemies' health) are good because like homing grenades, they seek out enemies, but at the cost of not being as powerful as just homing grenades. So you may want to carry a homing grenade too.

Some legendary grenades may have special effects which make them much more powerful than their damage ratings indicate. For example, the Fie Bee fire while spinning and then splits up to rain fire grenads around.

Longbow grenades were pretty useful in BL1, but don't seem to be as useful in BL2.

Grenade mods which have a long delay may allow enemies to move before they can explode. While enemies can't get away from a sticky homing grenade, a lower delay is still better.

Weapon Brands:

Jakobs are very powerful and may appear to have high fire rates, but they are not automatics; you must repeatedly pull the trigger, which is a nuisance. They have small clips. If a Jakobs weapon appears to have a good-sized clip, it probably uses multiple rounds for each shot; for example, a sniper rifle may have a clip holding 9 rounds but it uses 3 rounds per shot, meaning you have to stop to reload every 3 shots.

Hyperion weapons have high accuracy ratings, but it's a scam. When you look through the scope of a Hyperion sniper rifle or pistol, it moves around so much that it cannot be aimed with any precision. It stabilizes with repeated firing (by holding the trigger) but it is useless for trying to get one good shot at an enemy.

Torgue weapons have explosive rounds, but they are slow moving, giving enemies time to move. However, the Unkempt Harold is a legendary Torgue pistol which makes up for the slow moving rounds by spreading out in three directions, making them harder to evade.

Tediore weapon clips are thrown like a grenade when reloaded. For small weapons, this usually does nothing to enemies, but for a Tediore rocket launcher, it does almost as much damage as a rocket. So a clip that holds 3 rockets is more like having a 4-rocket clip. The flip side is that you have to be careful when reloading; if the clip hits something close in front of you, it can blow you up.

Maliwan weapons have low damage ratings but high elemental damage. They also have relatively low fire rates.

Dahl weapons fire in bursts when looking through a scope. This is good if you know it will take 6 or more rounds to kill an enemy, but is a waste of ammo if you just need one round to finish someone off. You can try to finish them without using the scope, in which case only one bullet is used, but at great distances, this may be hard to do. Also, there is a pause between bursts, so you don't really get the advertised fire rate, though there is a Relic which reduces the pause.

Vladof weapons are a great combination of damage rating, fire rate, and accuracy. And unlike Dahl, when using a scope, it will continue firing as long as you hold the trigger (until the clip is empty).

My Choices: I rarely, if ever use a Jakobs; don't like having to keep pulling the trigger. I never use a Hyperion which has a scope. I normally never use Torgues, the exception being the legendary. Tediores and Maliwans are normally not as damaging as a Vladof or Dahl.

My weapon of choice is Vladof (of any type of gun) or a Dahl sniper rifle if a comparable Vladof is not available.

Weapon Ratings:

A weapon with a damage rating much higher than a similar weapon is not the most damaging weapon if its firing rate is much lower than that of the other. For example, a weapon with a damage rating of 150 and a firing rate of 3 will not deliver as much damage per second as one with a damage rating of 100 but a firing rate of 9 rounds per second.

If all fights were at a distance with no rush to kill the enemy, the higher damage rating would be preferable because over time it does more damage with less ammo, but in most BL2 battles, enemies are charging at you or ganging up on you and you do not have the luxury of taking your time to kill them.

Magazine/clip size is significant. A machine gun or rifle which holds 50 or more rounds in a clip can be fired non-stop until an enemy is dead. One that holds 10 rounds, or even 20, is probably going to have to be reloaded, which gives the opponent time to kill you. An extreme example is an Infinite legendary weapon; it shows a clip size of 1 but never needs reloading and never uses up ammo. This makes it much more of a killing machine than its damage rating indicates. You can destroy a Constructor with a Caustic Infinity pistol with a damage rating of just 161.

Reload time can be important in specific circumstances, and if two similar weapons (e.g.: sniper rifles) have about the same damage ratings and firing rates, then the one with the fastest reload time is clearly preferable, but usually you will be choosing between weapons of different damage and firing rates in which reload time is less important.

Compare these two Rifles:

Mfgr.	Damage	Accuracy	Rate of Fire	Reload	Magazine	Element	Damage in 5.2 seconds
Jakob	183	90.8	19.2	4.2	11		2013
Vladof	142	90.1	7.4	3.9	23	104 Dam, 6%	3425

On the face of it, the Jakob looks like the better weapon. Its damage rating is much higher, accuracy is about the same, and its rate of fire is more than 2.5x faster - or is it? What if its rate of fire were 500? Remember that Jakob weapons are never automatics. Can you pull the trigger 500 times a second? Or even 19.2 times per second in the heat of battle while you may be trying to duck, move, or throw a grenade? Probably not. One web site says 8 shots per second is more realistic if you have to pull the trigger each time to fire the weapon.

Even if you could pull the trigger 19 times a second, the Jakob would empty its clip after 11 shots and then it would take 4.2 seconds to reload. So it would take 5.2 seconds to fire 11 rounds and reload, for a total damage of 2013 (11 x 183).

In the same 5.2 seconds, the Vladof could fire 23 rounds for a total damage of 3266 (23 x 142) and be 1 second into its 3.9 second reload. On top of that, the Vladof in this example deals elemental damage (which Jakob weapons never do) of 104 per second 6% of the time, and 6% x 23 x 104 = 31.74. If the elemental damage lasts for 5 seconds (some say 8; I'm being conservative) then 31.74 x 5 = 158.7, increasing its total damage to 3425+ versus 2013 for the Jakob.

Here is a comparison of a couple of launchers:

Damage	Accuracy	Rate	Reload	Mag.	Scope
2522	66.7	1.1	8.8	3	2.2x
745*3	73.3	1.2	6.8	9	3.9x

The second weapon's damage totals 2235 which is a couple of hundred lower than the first one's, but it has a higher accuracy, a 9% higher rate of fire, a 25% faster reload time, and very importantly, three times the magazine size. When it takes so long to reload, having a large magazine is a great advantage. Yes, you can cut short the reload time by changing the launcher to another weapon and then back to a launcher, but that is a bit of a pain.

Elemental Weapons

Once elemental weapons become widely available, I rarely use a weapon which does not deal elemental damage of some sort. While a non-elemental weapon may seem at first look to deal a lot more damage than a similar elemental weapon, when you add in the elemental damage for the 5-8 seconds such damage takes effect, the elemental weapon usually is better, even more so when you consider challenge bonuses which increase elemental damage chance and elemental damage per second and weapon mods which can increase them even more.

If an enemy's health box shows a blue line indicating he has a shield, a shock weapon is better to use against him, at least until his shield is depleted; otherwise, a fire weapon may kill him faster than a shock weapon with a higher damage rating. Hyperion bots are easier to kill with corrosive weapons. So it is a good idea to pack accordingly.

Relics

Relics can be used by all character types, but they usually don't appear before level 15 when you start getting cooldown relics. You can see a list of the most useful relics here

There can be duplication of purpose among relics. For example, one which increases the effects of corrosive weapons is not needed if you have one of equal strength which increase ALL elemental effects. Similarly, one which increases the damage of a launcher by 7% is not needed when you have one which increases the damage done by ANY explosive weapon by 10%.

Some times a relic which only increases the damage of one type of weapon is better than a slightly weaker relic which can increase the effects of several different types. For example, if you know you are going to be fighting bots with corrosive pistols, rifles, grenades, and launchers, a relic which increase corrosive damage of any weapon is a lot less trouble than having to swap out a relic which increases the damage of a pistol and one for a rifle, etc.

Second Wind relics are questionable (unless you fully expect to get killed) because to use one, you have to quit using some other relic such as a cooldown or a weapon enhancer.

Mods

You get mods long before you get relics, but each mod can only be used by the character type for which it is designed. In the weapons list, those with no letter in the first column are for Commandos, S = Siren. A = Assassin. G = Gunzerker. M = Mechromancer.

Even if you boost your backpack capacity up as described in the Slots page, there are so many relics, mods, and weapon types that you may run out of space. While I use a mod which boosts rifle damage and ammo capacity while doing Doc Mercy's mission killing bandits with his rifle, the rest of the game I never use it even though I've saved some to my armory just in case.

Using Relics and Mods

The effects of cooldown mods are added to cooldown relics if both are equipped, such as level 17 on the chart which shows a +21 cooldown mod and a +14 cooldown relic for a total cooldown aid of +35. And both of these can be added to some Skill Tree cooldown enhancers.

To get maximum benefit from Relics and Mods, you have to be willing to swap them in and out. For example, when using an elemental pistol, you may want to equip a relic to increase pistol damage and a mod to increase elemental damage. But if you need to use your special skill (turret, robot, etc.) as often as possible, when its time runs out, you should swap a cooldown relic and mod for the others, then switch back once the skill is recharged.

If you don't want to do all the swapping back and forth, a compromise would be to equip, say, a cooldown mod and a weapon-helping relic and don't change them.

Ideally, you should also swap when using relics or mods for specific weapons, such as when switching from a pistol to a sniper rifle.

Shields

The main criteria for shields are high damage resistance, high recharge rating, and a a low delay. If you look at the weapons list, you'll see that more than half of the best shields I've found have higher damage resistance with a reduction in health, but resulting in a net benefit higher than other shields on the same level.

One advantage of reducing health for higher shield damage resistance is if you get a second wind, shields are restored but health isn't; meaning that with this type of shield, you get a greater amount of your total protection back.

Likewise, if you are playing as Mechromancer, an item in the Skill Tree lets your robot restore your shields, but not your health. And while there is a Skill item which will restore your health when your weapon is fully loaded, it is a lot slower than the recharge time of most (if not all) shields.

Other features of shields can outweigh damage resistance, such as an extremely high recharge rate. The legendary Bee shown at level 27 on the weapons list has a damage resistance of only 1084 while a level 26 shield's is 2825, but the Bee has a very high recharge rate plus it boosts the damage of each shot as long as the shield is not taking damage. For more info, see this wiki page.

Other features such as absorbing ammo, elemental resistance, and dropping shield rechargers ("boosters") are secondary to the shields' first three ratings. Ammo is fairly plentiful and the supposed "elemental resistance" is questionable. A shield which claimed to make one immune to corrosiveness melted away in seconds when exposed to corrosive material.

The shield boosters are nice to have, but not if you have to give up initial damage resistance for them.

Bonuses

Some gear provides bonuses not normally provided in similar gear. For example, a common bonus is elemental resistance provided by some shields. Another is a relic which improves shotgun damage and reload speed while as a side benefit, it increases Fight For Your Life time by 10%. Some weapons will show a good-size critical damage bonus, and so on.

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