Throughout history, mankind has asked many profound questions, such as “Are we alone?”, “What is the meaning of life?”, and “Where’d we put last night’s dinner?”, but then there’s questions that everyone should want the answer to, yet somehow don’t. In our case, it’s this:

“How do I electrocute everything within a mile’s radius without getting myself fried in the process?”

Thankfully for you, after several weeks of gathering data/ equipment, several hours’ worth of frustration, multiple bouts of profanity, and an accident that resulted in a continent-sized electric storm (We’re still sorry, Tokyo!), we can now say that we now have a reasonable answer. You just need to follow this guide, get the equipment you’ll need, and you’ll hopefully be shocking everything within a mile’s radius in no time!*

*Emphasis on "Hopefully".

So, maybe I should explain the general idea of this whole thing – the point of this is to allow Gaige to act as an offensive powerhouse, fueled by nothing but Anarchy, a big-a** robot, and enough electricity to power Opportunity for one year straight. Unfortunately, Anarchy also has the unintended side effect of reducing accuracy horribly. So this means that, to keep hitting whatever you’re shooting at, you’ll have to get closer and CLOSER AND CLOSER AND – you get the idea. So to help survive such close encounters, I ended up investing some skills into some defensive buffs. The result is what I’m going to show you today.

But let’s be honest here – you didn’t come to hear me blabber all about how I came up with a build. You came to see what makes this build tick… and we’ll do that right now!

Lvl 50 Version


Lvl 61 Version



Important Skills (With Explanations)

• Shock Storm -
  
• Evil Enchantress -
  
• Wires Don't Talk - Given hwo we're running a shock build, this should be a no-brainer.
  
• Anarchy - Do I need to explain this?
  
• Blood-Soaked Shields - A nice survivablilty skill, and worth the trade-off. Even more awesome with the right choice of shields.
  
• Discord - Prevents the loss of all Anarchy Stacks if we do reload (It's gonna happen at one point or another, sadly). Even if that isn't what you want, the health regen and bonus accuracy are nice benfits as well.
  
• Rational Anarchist - Faster stacking. Besides, freebies are nice things to have every now and then.

Skills to Avoid (With more explanations)

• Death from Above - This skill is apperently glitched, since it seems to go off entirely at random. Even if it weren't glitched, the damage is too low to be worth the stacks.
  
• Interspersed Outburst - Unlike the above, this is a pretty nice skill; the problem is that it tends to be most useful in TVHM (In Normal, you won't have access to it until around Toil and Trouble, while it's charge time makes it ineffecient in UVHM).
  
• More Pep - This'll be a long one...
  
  You see, when maxed out, it will NOT add an additional 20%. Rather, it takes whatever the current chance is, multiplies it by 20% then adds whatever it got to the original chance. The formula seems to be something like this:
  
  (X * 0.2) + X = Y (In which X equals the original chance, and Y equals the chance under the effects of More Pep.)
  
  So, suppose we have a gun that has a 6% chance to shock. Doing the above formula, we would get an increase of 1.2%, resulting in a final chance of 7.2%. And this is all assuming you have 5/5 in More Pep.
  
• Most of BFF - There's a bunch of useful skills here, but we won't invest due to a lack of skill points.

Just as a note, the plan of progression shown below is just a theory - My original Gaige build never even had Anarchy or anything like that. So anything here may/may not actually work. Just a warning.

• Level 5: Spend your first point on Deathtrap. I’d be amazed if you come up with any other option right now.
  
• Levels 6-11: First off, put the next point after DT into Anarchy. This may seem kinda stupid, since health pools aren't very big early on, but it's only one point, and we get a nice return for now. After this, put the next few in Cooking Up Trouble.
  
• Levels 12-21: Now that we have a good means of damage and healing, now we can focus on LBT - Put the next 10 points into maxing out Myelin (To help keep shields up) and Shock Storm (Makes a nice reward for aiming properly).
  
• Level 22-26: Now we have access to our first major gamechanger, Shock and AUGGHH, which means we can give off a nice electrical explosion every couple of seconds. Also grab Evil Enchantress for mass DOT damage and whatnot.
  
• Level 27-31: Although this is a shock build, I don't care if you use different weapon types for a while. But once you start putting points into Wires Don't Talk, try and get at least two shock weapons in your loadout as soon as possible (Why two? We're gonna need the other two for enemies that resist shock, like the ION Loaders you should be encountering by this point).
  
• Level 32-40: By this point, you should be in TVHM, where things are getting tough - which means it's time to go back to OC! You'll wanna max out Smaller Lighter Faster and Bloodsoaked Shields at this point.
  
• Level 41-42: Now for the second gamechanger, Discord! Now that we have a means of preventing ourselves from all our stacks, you can put a point in Preshrunk Cyberpunk.
  
• Level 43-46: Next up are three points Typecast Iconoclast and our last gamechanger Rational Anarchist (It helps with fast stacking.
  
• Level 47-50: You can just dump the last few points into Electrical Burn. I couldn't think of anywhere else to put them, so you can just put the here.

Of course, there's always the people who have the cap raise, so for those people, here's the next few steps.

• Level 51-55: Since we're aiming for a high-Anarchy build later on, it'll help to put the next 5 points in Close Enough.
  
• Level: 56-61: Just put the next five points into maxing out Typecast Iconoclast, putting two more points into Preshrunk Cyberpunk, and then a point into Nth Degree. The last one can go wherever you want, but I usually put it into Electrical Burn.

The key parts of any decent build isn’t just good skill placement. You’ll also need good equipment that compliments those skills. This is what I've been using with this build, along with some other equipment that's also worth looking into:

Weapon Slot 1: Shock Hail

A Vladof AR that can be obtained from the mission "Bandit Slaughter: Round 5." Fires shots in an arc that have a VERY high crit modifier (+150%!). Some people might probably asking "Aren't ARs supposed to be terrible?", and I will take the time to say that yes, most of them are terrible. And given this thing's firing pattern, I wouldn't be supprised if anyone just threw it out as rubbish shortly after getting it.

However, if you take the time to master the Hail, it's a thing of beauty - the massive crit bonus can destroy things in less than a few seconds, with even more so against the right kinds of surfaces, and still more with Anarchy, and STILL more if the target is slagged. It's simply a matter of making sure your shots hit the right spots.

...Did I mention that it also heals you while you do all of the above? Because it does.
Optional: Kitten (Everyone Wants to be Wanted), Any Vexation SMG (Anywhere)

Weapon Slot 2: Sledge's Shotgun

A Bandit shotgun that can drop from Smash Head in the Fridge. Fires two shots for one trigger pull. If I can say anything about it, it really consumes ammo – but one shot from this also fires over 24 pellets, allowing it to deal more damage per shot than any quad-barrel you’ll find in the wild. For this reason, it’s my personal choice for close-up combat!
Optional: Twister (Ohm-Om-Omn), Any Torgue Ravager, Triquetra (Clan War: End of the Rainbow), SWORDSPLOSION!!! (The Sword in the Stoner)

Weapon Slot 3: Florentine

A Maliwan SMG that can be bought from the Flamerock Seraph Vendor. Deals both shock and slag damage at the cost of two ammo per shot. This will be our means of applying slag to everything. But if you aren't used to Plasma Casters, be prepared to use up a LOT of ammo (That's what happened when I used it the first time).
Optional: Chulainn (Clan War: Zafords vs. Hodunks - Kill the Hodunks), Slagga (Jimbo and Tector Hodunk)

Weapon Slot 4: Badaboom

A Bandit rocket launcher that drops from King Mong in Eridium Blight. Fires 6 rockets instead if the usual 3. It’s the shotgun of rockets, basically. Works surprisingly well with Anarchy.

This is also a grat launcher while leveling - I've managed to get one at Lvl 25 that I was still using at Lvl 40. Think about that.
Optional: Nukem (Black Queen/Torgue Vendors), Mongol (Dukino's Mom), Norfleet (Vermivorus/Hyperius)

Shield: Black Hole

A Maliwan nova shield that drops from Foreman Jasper/Rusty in Opportunity. It’s nova sucks enemies toward the player before going off. Nova Shields always seemed to go hand-in-hand with Blood Soaked Shields (Empty shield, kill enemy with nova, refill shield, repeat forever), but this might be the best shield to pair up with Blood Soaked Shields, since the nova pulls foes into nova range before going off.

The best part though? It also happens to be a shock elemental.
Optional: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (Chubbies), Transformer (Pimon)

Grenade Mod: Longbow Quasar

A Hyperion grenade mod that drops from Ultimate Badass Varkids in various places. Has a much higher range than most singularity grenades, but also has less damage on explosion. We'll be using this as a means of crowd control (which is VERY helpful in UVHM). I'd suggest using a Longbow version, for reasons that will be explained later.
Optional: Storm Front (Splinter Group), Shock Leech (Warrior), Lightning Bolt (Mages), Chain Lightning (Badass Mages)

Class Mod: Wired Catalyst

A class mod that can be obtained from any suitable loot source. Look for versions with +5 Wires Don't Talk at least, the other two don't need to both have +4 in each (Though it's kinda helpful).
Optional: Wired Catalyst with +6 Wires Don't Talk and +5 Evil Enchantress

Relic: Elemental Relic

A relic that can be obtained from any loot source. Unlike the other stuff, this is enitrely optional, and can be replaced with any relic you'd like.
Optional: Anything that suits you best.

• Q: Why aren’t we using all shock weapons?
  A: Because, in spite of all the buffs we’ve given Shock in this build, we still have to deal with enemies that are immune to Shock – like ION Loaders and Badass Shock Skags. I’m not using a shock rocket launcher for the same reason – after all, if you were in Fight for your Life, how would you like having to use shock rockets against shock-proof enemies? It’s horrible!
  
  
  
• Q: What about a Shock Norfleet?
  A: In terms of damage per shot, I’d certainly use it. But then it has some problems, like the weird shaking of the shots, and how eats rocket ammo like it’s an infinite resource. On the other hand, a decent Badaboom shoots out 6 rockets that deal 75-90K damage each, totaling up to about 450-570K damage – not as much as one from Norfleet, which does over 620K. But that’s with one trigger pull – we should also consider how many shots we can get before reloading. Badabooms usually spawn with a mag size of 6, while Norfleet spawns with 4. And lastly, because Norfleet uses three ammo per shot, we can only get 2 620K shots before reloading, or 1.25 million damage per mag. Badaboom, on the other hand, shoots 6 450-570K shots, can deal almost 3.5 million damage before reloading.
  
  Overall, it’s just a question of which deals more damage overall – and I think the Badaboom won.
  
  (Still, feel free to use the Norfleet if you like, it's your choice!)
  
  
  
• Q: Why use the Catalyst when you already have one that boosts shock damage?
  A: The Zapper isn't a terrible COM, but I feel the Catalyst out-does it in terms of damage - most Zappers I've seen have around +25% shock damage, while the Catalyst has around +35% damage on all elemental types.
  
  So you either have ALL elements get a large boost to damage on the Catalyst, or a moderate boost to one elemental type. It also helps that this bonus also applies to any other people you play with.
  
  I also think it has the better choice of skill boosts (Evil Enchantress and Shock Storm > More Pep and Electric Burn, any day of the week!).
  
  
  
• Q: Y NO CRIT???????
  A: The Crit was used for a bit after getting it - that use ended when it decided to throw itself off a cliff.
  
  Just kidding. But when the special effect of a weapon is that it leap out of your hands at random, that opens up some scary possiblites (Like throwing itself off a cliff, getting stolen by a rat theif, and so on). This is what ultimately killed the Crit for me. It's a shame, really, since it's relatives (The Good and Bad Touch) are arguably among the best SMGs in the game.

I've also come up with a few ideas for moves you can pull of while using this build. If you have any other ideas, feel free to suggest them in the comments.


A. Grenade Sniping
Since our build uses skills that make actual sniper rifles useless, we’re going to let something else take over sniping duties for us – which brings us back our grenades.
Basically, longbow grenades happen to teleport directly over to wherever you happen to be pointing at, and never lose accuracy from Anarchy (They don’t get a damage bonus either). So if we were to combine this with something like, say, a Storm Front, the result is something that could likely win the award for “World’s Deadliest Sniper Rifle.”

Note that this tends to work better with Damage grenades (Like the Storm Front and Quasar) than Transfusion grenades (Like O-Negative and Leech).


B. Discord Looping
You know how Rational Anarchist gives you 25 stacks when you have none? Well, if you wish, you can use Discord to run through all of them for constant health regen. Though this is rather pointless if you're using the Hail or Kitten, if you're using something like a Vexation SMG, this can be rather useful.

So you've gotten all the stuff you need for this build, now it's time to see if it's even a good fit for you. I've personally used the routes below as ways of testing builds, so consider going on these routes while trying it out.

A. The Fridge
This route goes through the Rat Cave areas of the Fridge (which you unlock by completing the side mission “The Cold Shoulder”), pitting you against Laney White, Smash Head, Rakkman, and the various Rat types. This is actually the route I took for farming for Sledge’s Shotgun a while back, and it’s still one of my favorite routes. I'd start your testing on this route, in all honesty.

B. Caustic Caverns
This route goes in a circle through the Caustic Caverns. Throughout, you’ll run into all sorts of creatures, like Varkids, Crystaliks, Threshers, and Spiderants. The Caustic Caverns also happen to be a nice place to find loot as well, so that’s a plus. Probably the longest of the three listed here.

C. The Bunker
This route goes through the Hyperion areas of Thousand Cuts and The Bunker(which you visited during “Where Angels Fear to Tread.” Filled with Loaders, Engineers, and Constructers. You’ll also be facing BNK-3R as a final stop. The hardest of the three (For me, anyways).

D. Circles of Slaughter
All 4 (Bandit, Hyperion, Creature, and Magic) are also good places for build testing, particularly on the last rounds of each. Difficulty will vary, depending on level, round, and type chosen. (That said, Magic Slaughter is toughest for me, if only because skeletons seem to resist everything that has an element).

E. Sawtooth Cauldron
Unlike the Fridge, you'll be facing regular bandits around here, though you'll have some encounters with a Thresher or two. However, you'll dealing with hordes of the previously mentioned bandits, and this is before you face the Buzzrds as well.

Anyways, this is where my guide ends. Thank you for reading, and comment/favorite if you liked this!

Credits
All In-Game Screenshots were taken by Edo309
Guide Thumbnail belongs to Furin94 of DeviantART ( http://furin94.deviantart.com/ )
Intro Picture belongs to juanrock, also of DA ( http://juanrock.deviantart.com/ )
Gaige and Borderlands 2 belong to Gearbox Software
Idea for Steam Guides belongs to Valve

Resources
The Offical BL2 Skill Calculator[borderlands2.com]
A Skill Calculator that you can share with people (Good for getting advice!)[www.bl2skills.com]
The GBX Forums' Master List of Mechro Builds, if this build ends up not being your thing.[forums.gearboxsoftware.com]

Other Crap
http://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=200011418
My main Mechro build nowadays, tailored to obtain as much DPS as I could. Also includes some raid compatibility, if you want.

http://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=218173282#-1
My Psycho build, about causing as many explosions as possible - from things like dynamite, explosive guns, grenades, enemies, YOURSELF, etc.

http://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=261970629&tscn=1400675534
Why it took this long to make a guide about Grog-Harold is beyond me.

http://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=289326572
I got nothing here.

Stuff I may/may not Make

• "Plasma Cat-ster" - You can never have too many cat puns.
  
• "Grenadier" - Axton has lots of grenade bonuses...

...And no, there won't be a Lvl 72 version. I've been through enough hell just to reach 61 and get my gear back together. I'm not doing it again.