The structure of this guide will be split into three parts: What is guaranteed to process Blood Bath; What may process it; and What will NOT process it.
For those who don’t know, Blood Bath is a tier 3 skill in the Bloodlust tree which gives you +0.5% weapon damage per Bloodlust stack for a short while (7 seconds, but a reaper COM can extend this) after killing an enemy with a grenade or explosion and gives a greater chance that an enemy killed this way drops grenade ammo. The max at 5/5 is 250% weapon damage and 75% grenade drop with 100 BL stacks. You can only increase it with a Legendary Reaper or a Blister COM.
Thanks to Blut for originally doing this and Hoyle4 for the template.
Note: If you have a weapon that’s not on the list, mention it and it’ll be tested unless you have video proof of whether or not it will process BB.
1.1 What processes Blood bath(guaranteed)
1.2 What processes Blood bath(not guaranteed{splash or special})
1.3 What doesn’t processes Blood Bath
What processes Blood bath(guaranteed)
Shotguns
Retcher, Tediore and Bandit splatguns, Carnage, Deliverance reload
Skills:
Bloodsplosion, Buzzaxe bombardier, Light the fuse(verified), Raving Retribution
Pistols:
Logan’s gun, Dahlminator, Wanderlust
Assault Rifles:
Kerblaster, Torgue barreled ARs, Bearcat, Boom Puppy, Seeker, Stinkpot
Rockets:
Hive, E-Tech rockets, Pyrophobia, Tunguska, Basic Bandit, Basic Maliwan, Nukem, Roaster, Bunny, Ahab, Badaboom
General:
Tediore reloads, Barrels, Bunny Throw
SMGs:
Avenger reload
Shields:
WTF Boosters, Black hole, Flame of the FireHawk, Hide of Terramorphous nova, Love Thumper nova, Impaler(bullet spike)
What processes Blood bath(not guaranteed{splash or special})
Assault Rifle:
Evilsmasher(don’t try it its next to impossible), Ogre, Hail,
SMG:
Hyperion, Maliwan, and Tediore plasma casters.
Florentine, Hellfire, Yellow Jacket
Rockets:
Basic Vladof Launchers, Norfleet, 12 Pounder, Creamer,
Snipers:
Volcano, Storm,
Pistols:
Unkept Harold, Hornet, Thunderball’s Fist, Rubi, Spikers, Darts, Pocket rocket, Basic Maliwan, Devastator, Teapot, Tinderbox,
Shotguns:
Landscaper, Omen, Blockhead, The grenades from the swordsplosion, Twister, Teeth of Terra (changed in the October 2015 patch).
General:
Non-red text Torgue weapons.
What doesn’t process Blood Bath
Snipers:
Chere-amie, Pimpernel, Cobra, Basic Maliwan Snipers
Shotguns:
Flakker, Slowhand, Hyperion splatguns, Tidal wave, Octo, Heartbreaker
SMGs:
Bandit plasma casters, Sandhawk
Shields:
Spike shields, Antagonist, Melee spikes from the impaler, HoT Spikes
Pistols:
Infection, Little Evie, Grog nozzle, Gub, Stalker
Assault Rifles:
MadHaus, Sawbar, Seraphim
A lot of players don’t know how this skill exactly works. That’s why I decided to spend some time to write an analysis for it.
Buzz Axe Bombardier – When thrown, your Buzz Axe now has Dynamite attached to it which explodes on impact.
But it does far more than that! It also lowers the damage output against Constructors significantly increases your damage output against nearly every other enemy type significantly changes the damage type of your thrown axe from melee damage to non-elemental and non-explosive grenade damage which is affected by grenade AND melee damage bonuses adds a portion explosive damage with splash effect to your thrown axe which is affected by grenade and explosive damage bonuses adds the ability to damage yourself by standing too close to the explosion, the self-damage is less than on enemies (about 1/4 of the standard explosive damage) but is affected by explosive damage bonuses
let you see the trajectory of the axe (better)
What it doesn’t do:
-increases the self-inflicted damage of StV procs
-increases/decreases speed of the axe
-provides free pizza or bacon strips
Synergies
Skills
Fuel the Blood (Melee Kill Skill) increases your grenade damage which leads to a highly increased damage output of a thrown axe. You’ll notice the increase only on the non-explosive direct/grenade damage part.
Borderlands 2: Buzz Axe Bombardier + Fuel the Blood = AWESOME! – Axeplosive…
Strip the Flesh increases the damage of the explosive splash damage, not the non-explosive direct/grenade damage. Because of this Strip the Flesh isn’t worthwhile most of the time if you want it to only increase the damage of BAB.
Elemental Elation increases the axe throwing frequency. In combination with Fuel the Blood you can throw far more high-powered axes while FtB is active.
Buzz Axe Bombardier is able to trigger Blood Bath. This is a powerful combination if kill an enemy at the end of Buzz Axe Rampage and gain the bonuses from Blood Bath to overpower your guns, especially if you’re using a Blister or Legendary Reaper class mod (because of the increased kill skill duration).
A thrown axe while Fuel the Blood is active causes insane havoc in combination with Bloodsplosion.
Gear
A Sheriff’s Badge increases the axe throwing frequency. In combination with Fuel the Blood you can throw far more high-powered axes while FtB is active.
An Elemental Relic which boosts explosive damage increases the damage of the explosive splash damage, not the non-explosive direct/grenade damage. Because of this this relic isn’t worthwhile most of the time if you want it to only increase the damage of BAB.
A roid shield affects the non-explosive direct/grenade damage and the explosive splash damage. The increase in damage of the explosive splash damage portion is only marginal.
A melee relic increases the non-explosive direct/grenade damage part, but not the explosive splash damage. Besides that the increase is marginal 407.
Wound (after kill) and Chaotic Barbarian class mods also increase the axe throw frequency. The former isn’t good at all and the latter can be used to build a crazy axe slinger/thrower Krieg with points in Buzz Axe Bombardier, (Fuel the Blood), Elemental Elation, a Sheriff’s Badge and the Mania tree.
Badass Rank Bonuses
The firerate bonus increases the axe throwing frequency.
The grenade damage bonus increases the damage of the non-explosive/direct-hit portion and the explosive splash damage.
Special thanks to holyslitbatman for addressing the Wound and Chaotic Barbarian class mods
The base duration appears to be 5 seconds. This increases by one second for each point in Flame Flare.
The self-burn damage is not determined by the DoT that proceed the burn. Seems to be some static range which I haven’t determined. I…didn’t start the test at level 6, so I don’t know the base or how it scales. Sorry. I can tell you that it deals about 22000 damage at level 60, and about 24300 at level 61. It does behave like regular fire damage though, dealing reduced damage to shields and increased damage when shields are down.
Burn, Baby, Burn decreases the self burn damage you take. The damage reduction increases for each level in the skill, with diminishing returns. Shoddy data collection only ended up giving me ranges, so I’ll say that 1/5 seemed to deal roughly 12.5% less damage, while 5/5 seemed to deal roughly 32.5% less expected damage. It doesn’t seem to affect external sources of fire damage, and I while I couldn’t test external burn damage too well, a brief test of standing in the wreckage of a fire barrel didn’t seem to change the number either. If anyone has a better method of testing external burn damage, please let me know.
Burn damage from a common Torch mod increased the self-burn damage by…some amount. The damage range barely changed between levels 60 and 61. Testing a fire Bone of the Ancients (29%) also increased self-burn damage but seemed to increase the average damage by roughly 20%. A Slayer of Terramorphous mod with 23% Burn Damage increased self-burn, averaging to 17.5% increase (very weird, I don’t understand this formula anymore). A 24% Fire Relic produced numbers similar to the Terra mod. So yeah, if you up your fire and burn damage with relics and mods, you’ll hurt yourself more. Hooray.
The following is an excerpt from my original thread, describing the testing method.:
TEST INFO:
The test was run on a computer with Krieg at level 60 and 61 in UVHM, no relic, mod, BAR, or shield. All data listed was tested at level 60 unless otherwise stated. I leveled Fuel the Fire, Pain is Power, and Delusional Damage, tested DoTs with both a level 52 Shock Rightsizing Plasma Caster and a level 59 Fire Rightsizing Bitch, with a level 54 Neutralizing Hornet used just once to confirm that the DoT that triggers the self burn doesn’t alter the damage received. Each test fell within a very tight range, so that was nice.
Next, I respecced and leveled only Fuel the Fire, to test some rather useless stuff. One random duration of self-burn did 38637 damage at level 60, and 42382 at level 61; ignoring the damage multiplier for the flesh, the numbers drop to 22078 and 24218. I then leveled Burn, Baby, Burn to 5/5, to see if increased burn damage increased the self-burn and if it’d increase it by the base 35% or the on-fire boost to 110%. However, one random duration of self-burn did 25315. I respecced again, leveled FtF, equipped a white Torch mod with 45% Burn Damage, and took 57232. Respecced again, grabbing only BBB; this was to test whether or not it was BBB specifically or the self-ignite chance decreasing the damage. The figure I got was extremely close to the number I listed above for my first test with the skill. Tested it multiple times with BBB at varying levels. The first test for each level, from 0/5 to 5/5, yielded these figures: 39383, 34392, 30460, 27928, 26869, and 25313. I also ran a test with a 45% Torch mod + 10/5 BBB, and took 27734.
I ran other tests with every Fire and Burn Damage boost I could find, and every one except BBB boosted the damage.
I didn’t see this info anywhere, so I figured I’d share just in case. The most interesting part is BBB’s damage reduction. This also presents an interesting case with Legendary Torch mods; for general gameplay, grabbing the weakest Leg Torch mod and throwing a point or two into BBB would yield the most survivability, especially if you’re running a Flame of the Firehawk.
Everyone knows how good this weapon is in general, and most know it’s really good on Krieg. But, here I am to explain exactly why it has incredible synergy with Krieg.
First of all, it’s explosive. This means it gets boosted by StF -not an insane increase, but not too bad. The bonus doubles when in FFYL, which is nice. It has a very wide spread, covering a very wide area, K has no accuracy bosting skills that are active in FFYL. +strip the flesh=a good 2nd wind weapon. (good anyway, of course)
The Flesh Crunch COM
is very good with this gun, it boosts StF by up to +6 points and gives extra explosive damage on top of that. (highest is 54% I think) This is one of the most powerful weapons with Flesh Crunch COM. Many different builds can be set up with this COM and this gun.
It doesn’t rely on crits.
Synergy with hellborn is bad, but puts out an unbeatable amount of damage.
Most builds with Krieg make it hard to crit, due to either fire-rate increases or PiP. With this gun however it is hard to crit with multiple projectiles at once, with on any character. Krieg loses hardly any DPS by not critting with it, unlike Zer0 for example.
Power Toast COM puts up to +6 points into pain is power, boosting the dmg by a whopping 110%! Most builds with this COM are focused around the Hellborn tree, so you can constantly be on fire for that full +110%dmg bonus.
Also some Power Toasts can put extra +5 points into Elemental Elation,
boosting fire-rate up by 110%. This boosts the DPS by an insane amount, but increase your ammo consumption by a long shot.
High synergy with Melee Krieg:
Leg. Sickle puts +5 points into PiP, Not as good as Power toast, but the COM is focused around melee, and I usually use Sheriff’s badge to boost the rate of buzzaxes thrown. This relic is very good for the Unkemt Harold.
The main pellets of the pistol can activate Blood Overdrive. It boosts the Melee dmg by 250%, which is a solid amount. The skill doesn’t last long, but still can be useful. The fuse time decrease of a grenade can be useful if you have a slag bouncing betty with a painful delay.
And lastly, Bloodbath.
It only gets triggered if you get a kill with the splash, and not the main projectile, but to get the splash to kil the enemy you can shoot at an object near him, or underneath him, like the floor. Blood Bath boosts gun dmg by an incredible +250%. That is with just 5 points in it. Many COMs can boost this skill and the KillSkill duration, meaning you won’t have to try getting a slash kill all the time.
The leg. reaper is a great COM for this weapon, it has up to +99% Kill-skill duration, which is very nice for a weapon that hasn’t got a 100% chance to trigger BB. Also it does put points into Blood Overdrive, meaning you can set up a melee/gun Krieg.
Boosted by FtB – It has 100% extra splash dmg, which can be boosted by FtB. This can be useful on melee builds.
My testing this evening has revealed Krieg’s damage equation for melee strikes.
Krieg has the same base melee damage as all other vault hunters. It follows this equation :
Base = 20 * 1.13^Level
Krieg gets a percentage melee damage bonus based on his level. It follows this equation :
KriegBonus = ( 1.6% * Level ) -20%
It reaches 50% at level 44. At 61, it’s 77.6%. This bonus doesn’t apply when using a weapon with a bayonet. It works differently than a bayonet, however, as it’s applied to his Base Melee BEFORE roid is taken into account. The same is true for Buzzaxe Rampage.
If no bayonet while not in Buzzaxe Rampage :
(( Base * (1 + KriegBonus)) + Roid ) * ( 1 + sum of melee bonuses from skills )
With bayonet while not in Buzzaxe Rampage :
( Base + Roid ) * ( 1 + Bayonet ) * ( 1 + sum of melee bonuses from skills )
Buzzaxe Rampage ( bayoneted weapons are unequipped so don’t factor in at all ) :
(( Base * 5 * ( 1+ KriegBonus )) + Roid ) * ( 1 + sum of melee bonuses from skills )
Release the Beast’s melee damage bonus is added to the other melee bonuses you might have ( sum of melee bonuses from skills ), rather than to the bonus from Buzzaxe Rampage ; which means it applies to Roid damage while the base Buzzaxe Rampage and Krieg’s scaling bonus don’t. That makes that skill all the more appealing, don’t you think?
I didn’t find any quirky examples like Backstab or Ambush for Krieg. All of his bonuses are added together and then applied.
Thrown axe damage is roughly 60% of the damage you would be doing with a melee strike.
THIS IS A PORT OF Sljm’s KRIEG MELEE FORMULA. NOT MY WORK!
This was found by IdlePhantom.
