The best Rafa builds in Borderlands 4 highlight the exo-soldier’s unique traits, from the solid sustain to explosive damage based on charging stacks. The challenge is to find the perfect combination of skills and guns in a game with so many options.
While it’s fun to play around with the skill trees by yourself, the Borderlands 4 community tends to go deep into the math behind the game and look for every special interaction one can possibly use to make a one-hit kill build. The good news is that they share all the info you need to build your character to run a hilariously strong build.
To help you, we’ve selected the best Rafa builds in Borderlands 4 so you can find the one that best suits your playstyle.
Rafa’s skill trees and playstyles, explained
Rafa is a versatile character, and each of his skill trees offers quite different playstyles, from long-distance cannons to dual energy blades. The Peacebreak Cannons are the heart of the red skill tree, which offers two cannons on his back to shoot any enemy in front of you. Arc Knives is a unique Action skill you find in the green skill tree, allowing you to slice enemies and build up a massive final attack. The blue skill tree gives Rafa the Apophis Lance, an electric pistol Rafa wields in his left hand that can be charged to land explosive damage or debuff enemies.
We have selected the best builds for each of Rafa’s skill trees. For the red skill tree, we have the Ricochet Peacebreaker build made by RageGaming. If you want to play with the green skill tree, then you can check the Melee Arc Knives build put together by Odinata. Lastly, Modadalan has a fun build for the blue skill tree.
Best Ricochet Peacebreaker build
Peacebreaker Cannons are the most solid option among the three Action skills Rafa has access to, but with the ricochet build, they crush any enemy, small or big, that appears in front of you. This build, as the name implies, works around “Ricochet,” an effect that only procs when you land critical hits and that makes the damage bounce to nearby enemies or to the targeted enemy, if it’s a single-target situation.
The RageGaming folks saw how Rafa’s skill tree actually empowers the ricochet effect due to the interaction of two passive skills: “Lateral Plinking” and “Asymmetric Warfare.” While the former gives Rafa the ability that any indirect projectiles gain a chance to ricochet (in other words, the shots from Rafa’s Peacebreaker Cannons), the latter increases the damage from indirect projectiles.
To see the Ricochet Peacebreaker build in action, check out RageGaming’s video below:
Best melee Arc Knives build
Although viable, making the Arc Knives work is not a simple thing to do, but by investing time in this build, you can prepare Rafa to face any challenge in the game. The idea with this build is to keep your Action skill up all the time and basically one-shot almost every enemy you find, while stacking buffs that will unfold into massive damage. Since you fight enemies pretty close, this build offers a good amount of sustain to restore health and keep you alive long enough to kill the next target.
While this build can be quite explosive, it requires some initial preparation. You need to attack enemies to gain “Diamond Hands“ stacks. Because of the Specialization passive skill “I Am A Gun,” your melee attacks benefit from gun damage bonuses you accumulated. This interaction, combined with other passives, makes this build capable of tons of damage. At the same time, this build requires specific gear, such as the legendary repkit “Meta Triple Bypass“ and pieces with the “Reel Big Fist“ firmware.
Below, you can find Odinata’s video with all the details about this build:
Best Apophis Lance build
Unlike the other two, this build doesn’t focus on turning its Action skill, Apophis Lance, into the main source of damage, but it uses it to buff the damage from your guns. Presented by the YouTuber Modadalan, this build uses the left side of the blue skill tree to turn the Apophis Lance into a taser and increases damage taken by enemies when under the effect of Shock, and gives you infinite ammo.
The gameplay loop of this build is based on popping Apophis Lance and shocking enemies. From there, all the other important skills start to proc. Metal Management makes your gun consume no ammo when you activate your Action skill. This means you can use a gun’s underbarrel or secondary fire mode for as long as you can keep enemies shocked. To capitalize even more on the Shock effect, this build runs the passive skill “Awe,” which guarantees critical hits at shocked enemies for a period.
You can see this build in action by watching Modadalan’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, Vex, and Amon.
