How To Play As The Gunzerker In Borderlands 2

Borderlands 2 is the sequel to the hit game Borderlands, and was released in September 18th, 2012.  The game follows a new set of four vault hunters on the planet Pandora, as they try to stop the evil Handsome Jack.  Borderlands takes everything that made the first Borderlands great and expands upon it, making the game more enjoyable than ever.

There are four playable classes in Borderlands 2 (though a fifth class is in the works).  My personal favorite class is the Gunzerker.  The Gunzerker is the tank of the group, whose skill heals him, grants damage resistance, ammo regeneration, and allows him to use two guns at once.

The Gunzerker plays well no matter which skill tree you use, though each one will cause your play style to shift dramatically.

If you follow the brawn skill tree then you will get skills that increase your maximum health and help you to regenerate health as well as a very powerful special melee attack called fistful of hurt.  The brawn tech tree climaxes with the Sexual Tyrannosaurus skill that grants you health regeneration when you take damage, and the Come At Me Bro skill that allows you to flip the bird to enemies while gunzerking to instantly regain all of your health and gain massive damage reduction, though you will garner a lot of aggro.

With this strategy in mind, you can charge into the fray, absorbing a lot of damage as well as dishing it out, and when your health starts getting low then you can start gunzerking, which will instantly give you half of your health back.  Take down as many enemies as you can and when your health gets really low then use the Come At Me Bro skill to get all of your health back instantly.  This means that the enemies will nearly have to kill you three times, disregarding all of the health regeneration bonuses you receive, before you go down.

The Rampage skill tree’s aim is to gunzerk as much as possible.  It has a lot of skills that enable you to decrease gunzerking’s cooldown or maintain the skill for longer periods of time.  This will not only cause enemy attacks to do around 75% damage to you, but it will of course give you the use of two guns at once, allowing for a lot more firepower more often, more ammo regeneration, and more opportunities to use slag combos, etc.

While using this strategy, the Gunzerker is able to use his ability almost constantly, which of course will make you rely on it, though it will also make you more adept without ironsights.  This tech tree is not for people who really enjoy sniper rifles, because you can’t use the scope while in gunzerking mode.

The final tech tree is Gunlust.  This tech tree does not work well with rampage because of one of its final skills, Keep It Piping Hot gives the Gunzerker increased damage with grenades, melee, and guns while the gunzerking skill is cooling down.  It’s fine to combine this tree with rampage if you don’t use this skill though.  Gunlust has a lot of skills that have to do with swapping and reloading weapons.  This tech tree is good for powerful weapons with small magazines.

By utilizing the Auto Loader skill, every time you kill and enemy the guns not in your hands reload, and with the Quick Draw skill, you can swap weapons a lot faster, and with the All I Need Is One skill, the next shot after you switch weapons does increased damage.  This can lead to a lot of bonuses and a lot more damage done to the opponent.  This is also the tech tree with some of the most useful first level skills (when combined with skills farther down the skill tree).

Several combinations for the Gunzerker are: Heavy Brawn with some Rampage, where you become a tank that can use the gunzerk skill more often; Heavy Rampage with some Brawn, where you gunzerk all the time and regenerate a lot of health while you do it; some of each of the three trees, where you regenerate health while gunzerking, which you do a lot, and you never stop firing because you’re constantly reloading, swapping weapons, and doing bonus damage.

Of course there are more combinations, but you have to find the one that matches your play style.  If you like to rush into the action, then try the brawn tree.  If you love the gunzerking skill, then try the rampage tree.  And if you like to play more technically, using stacking bonuses to your advantage, then try the gunlust tree.  Just have fun doing it and you shouldn’t have any problems.

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