As the Siren character in Borderlands 4, Vex comes with fun, nonsensically magical abilities that just work with the Borderlands formula. The most metal character on the roster, Vex builds can go from sending a spectral giant feline to attack enemies to summoning devilish wings on her back.
While it’s great that Borderlands 4 gives us many skill options to make Vex play exactly the way we want, finding the perfect match between skills and guns is still quite complex.
To help you out, we’ve aggregated the best Vex builds in Borderlands 4, based on the work of Zenny, NickTew, and RageGaming. Since the game can change considerably as new patches are released, we plan on updating this guide periodically.
Vex’s skill trees and playstyles, explained
Vex’s skill trees come with solid options for all playstyles. If you’re starting the game and want to stay safe while fighting enemies, you can focus on the red skill tree and summon Trouble, your phase familiar. In case you want to be more involved in the action, you can opt for the blue skill tree, which allows you to summon copies of Vex. However, if you’re an experienced player ready for the action, the green skill tree gives you the power of Incarnate to fight any enemy by yourself.
However, that’s not to say you can’t enjoy and beat the game by playing with others. Zenny does a great job by making Trouble and the red skill tree work around buffing Vex and her guns. RageGaming presents a powerful blue skill tree that focuses on applying status effects and deleting the enemy’s health bar. For the green skill tree, NickTew works around the interaction between some skills and guns to reach high numbers with Vex.
Below, we explain why these builds are the best ones for Vex in Borderlands 4.
Phase Familiar build
The general idea of this build is to buff Vex’s attacks with a combination of passive skills that have good synergy with electric-based guns and overshield. This is quite a tank-y build, because of passive skills such as “Overheal,” which raises Vex’s health regeneration when she has overshield. On the other hand, your damage comes from the “Corporal“ passive skills, which increase Vex and her minion’s damage dealt while she has overshield.
Because of this constant attack buff Vex receives from having overshield, every bullet will hit like a truck. To make her stronger than that, this build runs “Shocking Attunement,” a passive skill that gives Vex gun damage and movement speed when holding a gun with shock damage. This is not a pet build, so you won’t be using Trouble as your main source of damage, though. You need to command Trouble to proc the “Yowl and Bay“ passive skill and gain gun damage.
Below, you can watch Zenny’s original video and all the details about this build:
Elemental Spectre build
If you enjoy seeing the enemy’s health bar melt while several damage-over-time stacks ticks, this build is for you. As the name implies, you will be using elemental guns to apply elemental status effects on enemies. Since this is a blue skill tree, you can summon clones to also shoot enemies and apply even more status effects. While it doesn’t depend on a specific item, this build requires you to carry guns of different elements and adapt to every enemy based on the kind of defense they have.
To maximize the damage from these DoTs, the build runs “Portents of Suffering“ to increase their damage, and “Prismatic Ichor,” which applies a random elemental status effect whenever one is applied by your — or your clones! And there is more! With “Keen Suffering,” the status effect damage — a.k.a. all the DoTs you apply — can critically hit the enemy.
The RageGaming folks cover all the nitty-gritty of this build in their original video, which you can watch below:
Blood Shot build
Unlike the other two builds, the Blood Shot is a bit more dependent on specific pieces of equipment, but if you have the patience to go after them, it’s totally worth it. The idea behind this build for the green skill tree is to constantly trigger Vex’s “Blood Shot” passive skill, which converts your damage to Kinetic and calculates it based on your current health. While usually this skill only triggers when you use a repkit, this build has unique tools to increase the chance of making every shot turn into a Blood Shot.
The first piece of gear you need is the “Undead Eye” legendary class mod. Using a sniper, if you kill an enemy, the class mod will proc Blood Shot. At the same time, it gives you the chance of triggering Blood Shot when you critically hit an enemy. Now, to make this mod work, you will need a Bod shotgun, like the “Aramid Bod” or the “Ballistic Bod,” for example. This legendary shotgun comes with the “All-Arounder” affix, which makes a Bod shotgun count as all the other types of guns. In other words, every shot of this weapon has the chance to trigger the “Undead Eye” class mod perk.
To find out more about the skills and how to play this build, check NickTew’s video below:
Do you need more help with Borderlands 4? For those who are new to Kairos, check out our beginner’s guide before you get started and our best classes guide to find the right one for your playstyle.
If you want to have fun with your weapons, be sure to read our guide on how to get more SDU tokens. We know that traversing the immense map of Kairos is a challenge in itself, so you should prioritize unlocking a vehicle, as well as fast travel points. And if you’re already enjoying the endgame of Borderlands 4, don’t forget to check the weekly reset time for all current challenges.
We also have build guides for the other characters: Harlowe, Rafa, and Amon.
