Lilith Character Builds

Welcome to the second installment of Borderlands Character builds. This week's guide will focus on the Siren, Lilith.

In terms of sheer sex appeal, Lilith blows all other video game vixens out of the water, but that is not what makes her bad-ass. Lilith has the ability to Phasewalk. This does two things. First it allows her to move much more quickly allowing her to move to within striking range of an enemy fast. Second, and arguably, most importantly, it turns her invisible. So that enemy that she just ran up to no longer sees her. This ability allows Lilith to be a deadly melee assassin if that's your style. In fact, Assassin is one of her skill tress, as is, Controller and Elemental (thanks again to Gearbox for making a skill tree available online at http://bit.ly/RoUSiF so I didn't have to create one myself).

Like all of the character classes in Borderlands, you can tailor Lilith's skills to suit your play style; sniper, melee fighter, gun-toting bad-ass mama, whatever. However, also like the rest of the classes, the designers built the skill tree so that you can maximize her inherent power, Phasewalk. In my opinion, tailoring your build to complement the inherent power is the most effective no matter what character class you choose.

Upon selecting Lilith, I immediately saw the potential to create a killer ninja-like character, so that is what I went with on my initial playthrough. Her Assassin skill tree offers the best skills to both complement her Phasewalk ability and to buff her melee attacks. The main skill you want to acquire from the Assassin group is the tier 4 Phase Strike ability. You should be able to acquire this skill by level 25. This skill increases Lilith's melee damage up to a massive 800% when you attack from Phasewalk. Couple this with a bladed revolver that adds up to 200% melee damage and you have a character that can easily kill or significantly weaken a foe with one hit and without firing a weapon.

Again, I believe it is best to get to your chosen tier 4 power as fast as possible. Therefore, my progression through the Assassin skill tree went something like this:

1. Slayer to level 5 (character levels 6-10) - Slayer increases critical hit damage up to 25% regardless of whether or not Lilith is in Phasewalk mode or not. While critical hits are a piece of cake with a sniper rifle, they can be tricky with melee attacks. However, since Phasewalk turns you invisible, you can take a little more time to aim your melee attack at the head when you sneak up on an enemy.
2. Hit & Run to level 5 (character levels 11-15) - This skill gives your over all melee damage a 35% increase AND increases the duration of Phasewalk by 4 seconds when fully leveled up. The extra time comes in handy for lining up those critical melee hits and the damage boost doesn't hurt either.
3. Blackout to level 5 (character levels 16-20) - By level 5, the Blackout skill reduces your Phasewalk cooldown by 6 seconds per kill, allowing you to enter Phasewalk more frequently. This becomes extremely important when faced with multiple enemies. Early on you will still have to take cover after exiting Phasewalk, but it is possible with the right combination of skills to immediately re-enter Phasewalk (don't worry, I'll show you how this is done).
4. Phase Strike to level 5 (character levels 21-25) - As mentioned before, Phase Strike increases your melee damage up to 800% (in 160% per level increments). For foes of the same level or lower, this amount of damage is crippling if not lethal.

Now, with Phase Strike fully leveled up, you might consider working on Silent Resolve, which increases your damage resistance for a few seconds after Phasewalk. This is tempting considering that if you are using your melee attacks, you become very vulnerable after attacking from Phasewalk when faced with multiple enemies. However, I would prefer to have the ability to re-enter Phasewalk more quickly, so I saved those five points and invested them elsewhere.

So after acquiring level 5 Phase Strike, my skill progression went like this:

1. Spend 5 skill points on either tier 1 skill from the Elemental group or split the five points between them if you wish. It really does not matter because they both are only effective when using weapons. Since we are focusing on a melee fighter, these five points are essentially being sacrificed so that we can acquire:
2. Radiance up to level 5 - This skill is important to have if you want to re-enter Phasewalk immediately, here's why. Remember the tier 3 Assassin skill Blackout I had you power up? The thing with that skill is that it reduces the cooldown rate by 6 seconds regardless of whether you are in Phasewalk or not. You just have not noticed this because up to this point you have only been able to make a kill by attacking thus terminating Phasewalk. What Radiance does is continually cause electrical damage to nearby enemies while you are Phasewalking. Even though enemies are taking damage, they are still unaware of your presence while you maintain Phasewalk. So the strategy here is to remain Phased as long as possible and if there is anyone alive when you are almost out of time, hit them with a melee (preferably critical) before Phasewalk ends. Shock damage from radiance only has a base of 1 hitpoint per second per skill level (i.e. Radiance fully leveled up causes 5 hp per second of damage). However, that is just a base and the actual damage increases as your character levels up. Damage per second can increase as high as 17 hp/sec. It is also important to note that this electrical damage can continue for a very long time even after exiting Phasewalk. Not only that, it spreads easily to other enemies who get too close to one of their buddies who is under this effect. With lower level foes, your Phasewalk will have been reset by the time you exit allowing you to immediately re-enter because the shock damage killed enough to reduce it enough. Since at this point the cooldown for Phasewalk is 36 seconds, it only takes 6 deaths to completely reset it. This is doable in many scenarios. Now, from here you can go one of two ways. Initially, I stayed in the Elemental tree and buffed up my damage potential by investing in:
3. Venom up to level 5 - Venom adds up to 25% damage plus a chance to corrode an enemy (continual acid damage over time).
4. Phoenix up to level 5 - Upon killing a foe, this skill deals fire damage to all those around you. This fire damage, like shock and corrode, can cause damage over time and is based on the character level (same base and damage structure as Radiance and can spread from enemy to enemy). It also adds up to a 25% chance to have shot's fired not cost ammo for a few seconds. With Phoenix coupled with Radiance coupled with Blackout, it is highly likely to be able to continually re-enter Phasewalk as long as there are enough enemies around.

Now there were a couple of disadvantages to this build that I discovered after a while. First, Radiance and Phoenix will both set off barrels that are nearby thus inflicting damage (sometimes severe) on yourself. This is especially troublesome when you get in a tight situation with little health and are trying to run for cover only to find that the nearest cover has two explosive barrels right next to it. In addition, all elemental enemies are resistant to elemental damage of the same type. When I intially leveled up radiance, I found that completing missions in The Secret Armory of General Knoxx was very difficult if there were Shock Troopers in an area and in the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, entering Phasewalk while battling Tankensteins does nothing but heal them. Those suckers are hard enough to beat without you helping them out. In fact, most of the mission in the Knoxx story arc involve fighting Shock, Chemical, and Pyro Troopers, often intermingled, making those missions very difficult for the Elemental Siren. With Phasewalk out of the question in many situations, you are effectively crippled because the Phasewalk is where most of your damage power comes from.

There are ways to overcome the difficulties presented by the Elemental Siren, but those lie beyond the scope of this article. Perhaps another time or maybe we can discuss it in the comments section. And as always, respecs are relatively cheap, so just respec if you plan to go up against the Lance (or Tankensteins). I bought a respec and went with the Controller tree to augment my Assassin skills.

1. In tier 1 of the Controller set you could go with either skill (Diva or Striking). Striking gives you a chance to Daze enemies, which slows and decreases their accuracy, but Diva gives you higher shield capacity. Both are good powers and are fairly equal in the advantage they provide, it's just that Striking is offensive and Diva is defensive. So pick the one that suits your natural play-style the best. I played with both, but tend to favor Striking.
2. Same thing goes with tier 2 skills. Dramatic Entrance gives you the chance to Daze multiple enemies upon entering Phasewalk, but Inner Glow restores your health while Phasewalking. In my experience, I found Inner Glow to be more useful (and yes I did try them both out).
3. Hard to Get up to level 5 - Hard to Get reduces your Phasewalk cooldown by up to 16 seconds. This means that at level 5 your cooldown is only 20 seconds. This almost (but not quite) offsets the advantages that Radiance and Phoenix give you against SOME enemies, the advantage being that the benefit works regardless of what type of enemy you are fighting.

The tier 4 Controller skill adds an advantage to using a gun and does not really complement Phasewalk or melee damage, so if you are working on a melee character invest future points into other skills that you find useful.

Excluding battles involving elemental enemies, the Elemental/Assassin build offers great advantages even at lower levels. One common scenario is against normal bandits. Imagine as you Phasewalk up to an enemy, the shock damage will take down their shield (if they have any) and deal Shock damage. As you attack out of Phasewalk you get additional damage from Slayer (if it's a critical hit) and Phase Strike, and at the same time, Venom has the chance to add continuous corrosive damage, which a) continues to damage the enemy over time and b) adds bonus damage to subsequent attacks. This combo is almost always an instant kill for enemies of the same level and even for enemies a few levels higher than you, you can usually finish them off with a few more attacks. Meanwhile, Blackout is diminishing your cooldown with every kill. Rinse. Repeat.

Aside from the obvious drawbacks versus elemental enemies this build has a couple other drawbacks. Since you will be dealing your primary damage through melee attacks, you are most definitely going to take damage in a lot of scenarios since there is rarely a way to take cover immediately while your Phasewalk cools down. Shields with quick healing properties are preferable. While you can get by with a stronger shield that heals slowly, your best bet for this build is to find a quicker healing shield even at the sacrifice of less protection. In addition, you must be very aware of your surroundings, especially in regard to damaging barrels. Maximizing your Phasewalk duration and reducing its cooldown is vital and having a healing skill like Inner Glow is highly beneficial.

The Controller/Assassin build holds less disadvantages, but the damage potential and the possibilities of immediate Phasewalk re-entry diminish greatly. Using respecs before key battles can be used to efficiently correct character deficiencies giving you the best possible chances for a favorable outcome.

As always I welcome your comments and ideas. I would love to hear (and try) any killer Lilith builds that you may have come up with. This is what makes Borderlands such a great game. The combinations of powers and creative ways to use them is almost endless.