General Information

Salutations! This document contains important and reliable information about skill trees, general builds, and useful information for Salvador. This list was compiled and put together by the members of the BL2 chat in the Borderlands community discord. While not all of the builds listed will tackle all of the content in the game (looking at you, Voracidous), they will work for general play and be useful throughout all levels of the game. All of the gear and general information listed in this guide is up-to-date with the Fight For Sanctuary DLC, and is fine tuned to show the best gear and data for Salvador.

Basic Information

Salvador is the gunzerker in Borderlands 2. He is very powerful and considered by most to be the game’s strongest character (although a lot of his gameplay can revolve around glitches in late game). Despite that, Salvador’s early game is noticeably worse than other characters. From levels 5 to 30, he struggles with keeping up his action skill, and staying alive. However he rapidly picks up momentum and power from level 31-50. His action skill is Gunzerking, which involves him using two guns for a limited time. His skill trees consist of the Rampage tree, which is all about gunzerking for as long as possible, the Gun Lust tree, which gives him massive buffs to gun damage and the Brawn tree, which makes him even more of a tank than he already is. Salvador excels with weapons and items that have great synergy with one another and any high fire rate weapons.

Skill Overview and Guide

Gunzerking: Salvador’s action skill is Gunzerking. When gunzerking is active, he can equip and hold 2 weapons, one in each hand. When you activate gunzerk, you instantly regenerate 50% of your max health. While in gunzerk you have 50% damage resistance, and you regenerate health and all ammo types (except rocket ammo). Towards the beginning of the game (think Normal Mode and TVHM), gunzerk lasts a short time, and as such, has little use. Once you have skills such as Last Longer, Yippee-Ki-Yay and Get Some, it becomes very easy to be in gunzerk constantly. While gunzerking, some attributes such as crit damage, melee damage and life steal from Moxxi weapons carry over between weapons.

Gun Lust Tree:

This tree is used to maximize Salvador’s general gun damage

Locked And Loaded: After reloading your gun, you have increased fire rate for a short time. Gives bonus fire rate for more DPS after reloading, and is generally always picked up. Synergizes well with Vladof weapons, for their high fire rate potential is increased even more.

Quick Draw: Weapon swap speed and Critical Hit Damage. This skill is picked up a majority of the time, as it provides good overall bonuses to the utility of Salvador – granting more swap speed being beneficial, and ties in well with All I Need is One.

I’m Your Huckleberry: Damage and reload speed with pistols. Useful for builds involving the use of 2 pistols, such as grog and harold. Can be skipped otherwise.

All I Need is One: Swapping weapons causes your next shot to deal more damage. This skill, as stated above, ties in well with Quick Draw, but doesn’t have much practical use outside builds such as off-hand deputy sal.

Divergent Likeness: Holding 2 of the same type of gun while gunzerking gives you more damage, while holding 2 different types gives accuracy. Both stats are generally helpful, and Salvador has a surprising lack of standard gun damage outside of I’m Your Huckleberry (or at least a consistent source of it), so that side of the skill can help quite a bit.

Auto-Loader: Whenever you kill an enemy, both the guns not in your hands will be reloaded. If you swap guns after Auto-Loader has triggered, it will trigger Locked And Loaded. This is one of the easier ways to activate Locked and Loaded while using “infinite ammo” builds with 5-Shot-Or-6 and Inconceivable.

Money Shot: Allows your weapons to deal a massive amount of increased damage on their last shot dependent on mag size. This bonus is multiplicative with basic gun damage bonuses, so skills such as I’m Your Huckleberry and Divergent Likeness still have a good impact.

If you are specced into Inconceivable, this effect can proc multiple times in a row.

The bonus applies to both weapons, but it is purely dependent on the magazine of the gun in your right hand while gunzerking, making it an excellent tool for low magazine weapons in your left hand. Filled To The Brim increases magazine size, which can help you reach the maximum magazine required easier.
The damage bonus from Money Shot can actually go higher than what the game makes you believe, with a magazine size of 12 rather than the 10 that is listed in the game. This means the maximum damage per point of Money Shot is 96% instead of the listed 80%. So at 11 points spent in the skill, the damage bonus can go up to a maximum of +1056% instead of 880%. All listed values are still accurate for a magazine size of 10.

Down Not Out: Allows you to Gunzerk while in Fight For Your Life. Most of your damage is from gunzerking, so this skill is very useful in getting yourself out of FFYL. There is no reason not to take it.

Lay Waste: Killing an enemy grants fire rate and critical hit damage. One of the better skills in Sal’s left tree, granting Sal even more fire rate for his weapons, outputting more DPS, and increased critical hit damage. Almost always spec at least 1 point into.

Keep It Piping Hot: Increases your gun, melee and grenade damage while your gunzerk is cooling down. If you activate Get Some while gunzerking, this effect applies during gunzerk as well, making it a consistent way to increase your damage regardless of if you are gunzerking or not.

No Kill Like Overkill: Killing an enemy grants you a bonus to your gun damage for 10 seconds based on how much excess damage was dealt. The added damage is equal to how much overkill damage was done, but only caps at 400% additional gun damage (unlike Krieg’s Bloodsplosion, which has no cap). While this skill doesn’t stack multiple times; the bonus is always based on the last enemy you killed, the added damage bonus makes it very likely that your next kill will also suffer higher overkill damage due to your overall higher damage output. This skill will pretty much always result in an immediate increase in damage, making it an amazing skill.

Rampage Tree:
Most of Salvador’s cooldown and duration skills are held within the Rampage tree, and as such is probably his most important tree.

Inconceivable: Gives you an up to 50% chance to not consume ammo at 5 points spent, depending on your current shield and health amounts. This skill has interactions with Money Shot, and is one of Salvador’s best skills for prolonging your DPS output due to not having to reload.

Filled to the Brim: Increases mag capacity and ammo carrying size. Almost always taken, as it is a great quality of life skill that helps DPS with more mag, and works well with Inconceivable, 5 shots or 6, and more.

All in the Reflexes: Grants reload and melee damage. A nice skill to pick up, but not always mandatory.
The reload speed from this skill only applies to your main hand weapon

Last Longer/I’m Ready Already: Simple skills that help with duration and cooldown of gunzerking. Very useful early on to give you the ability to gunzerk more often and for longer periods of time.

Steady As She Goes: A single-point skill that occasionally grants your guns improved accuracy and recoil reduction while gunzerking. The effect can sometimes be very noticeable, so there is no real reason to not pick this skill, since it is simply one point

5 Shots Or 6: Gives you a chance to return ammo back to your magazines. This skill is a core part of Salvador’s “infinite ammo” build alongside skills like Inconceivable and Filled To The Brim.

Double Your Fun: This skill lets you throw 2 grenades at the cost of 1 while Gunzerking. Grenades can provide damage, slag, crowd control or other utility, so being able to throw more grenades quicker is extremely helpful. No reason to not pick it up for just 1 point.

Yippee-Ki-Yay: Mostly useful during mobbing, increases duration when you kill an enemy. This skill can practically make your gunzerk duration infinite as long as you keep killing enemies fast enough.

Get Some: Probably Salvador’s most important skill when it comes to getting your gunzerk back. When you shoot an enemy, you reduce your gunzerking cooldown, but it also functions within gunzerk. This allows you to regain your gunzerk even before it ends if you shoot enemies enough and if your gunzerk duration is long enough, thus having synergy with skills like Last Longer and Yippee-Ki-Yay. Reducing cooldown this way also counts as gunzerk being on cooldown even while it is active, so it activates the effects of Keep It Piping Hot.

Keep Firing: The longer you fire in gunzerk, you gain more fire rate and reload speed. This is mostly used in ‘infinite ammo’ builds, as you get to keep the bonuses for longer periods of time.

Brawn Tree:
This tree focuses more on survivability; more health, health regen and damage reduction. It also gives boosts to Salvador’s movement speed and a little bit of fire rate.

Incite: After taking damage, you gain increased reload and movement speed. Useful in basically every Salvador build.

Hard to Kill / Ain’t Got Time To Bleed / Sexual Tyrannosaurus: These 3 skills make up the health regen you get from this tree. Especially useful when going with a Brawn orientated Salvador build. Sex Rex is generally regarded as one of the better healing skills of the tree, and should have increased point spending via a COM.

Asbestos: Damage over Time effects against the player in later parts of the game can be deadly, so lowering their duration on you can be helpful. Especially helps with combat in Lilith DLC, or in areas with large quantities of Maliwan weapons, to decrease the DoT damage of it.

I’m The Juggernaut: Damage reduction. Due to the way reduction works in this game, the low values that Juggernaut provides are often not useful or essential in order to get more than 1 or 2 points into. Generally, it is better to get Asbestos over Juggernaut.

Fistful of Hurt: A melee override that lets you deal a high-damage uppercut, before going on a base cooldown of 15 seconds. This uppercut deals 4 times your normal melee damage, and knocks back and stuns enemies if they are able to be stunned.

All Out of Bubblegum: Fire rate while shields are down. Salvador’s whole playstyle once you get into higher levels is very aggressive and a lot in enemies’ faces, so it’s very likely that your shields are down most of the time anyway, so this simply improves his entire playstyle. Also synergizes with Inconceivable, which requires your shields to be lower.

Bus That Can’t Slow Down: Grants movement Speed while gunzerking. This is a great perk for Salvador, and allows him to dodge enemy bullets, and to get to each individual enemy a lot faster, with some general QoL through faster travels.

Come At Me, Bro: Brawn tree capstone that lets you taunt enemies once per gunzerk, instantly regaining all of your health on activation, as well as granting you health regen and a large amount of damage reduction for a good duration. Great skill for any build that involves going down this far into the tree, and should almost always be picked up if available. Works well with any Sal that is not relying on Moxxi healing to survive.

Gear Guide

The highlighted colors match the rarities of the items in-game. Effervescent/rainbow rarity is highlighted with this color, and non-uniques with this color.

Guns:

Assault Rifles: Lead Storm, Kitten

Honorable Mentions: Hail, Shredifier, Ogre, Sawbar, Vladof Spinigun, Bekah

Shotguns: Interfacer, Butcher, Conference Call, Orphan Maker, Hydra

Honorable Mentions: Jolly Roger, Jakobs Quad, Twister, Slow Hand

Pistols: Unkempt Harold, Lady Fist

Honorable Mentions: Fibber, Vladof Anarchist, Stinger, Stalker Hyperion Synergy, Rubi, Infinity

Rocket Launchers: Norfleet, Vladof Topneaa, Badaboom, Creamer

Honorable Mentions: Vladof Launchers, 12 Pounder, Nukem

Snipers: Lyuda, Moloko, Pimpernel

Items:

Grenades: Chain Lightning

Honorable Mentions: Magic Missile, Crossfire

Shields: Rough Rider Antagonist, Blockade, Evolution

Honorable Mentions: Neogenerator, Adaptive shields, Fabled Tortoise

Class Mods: Legendary Gunzerker, Legendary Hoarder, (Chaotic Evil/Good/Neutral) Monk

Honorable Mentions: Berserker, Hoarder, Legendary Titan, War Dog, (Auspicious) Raider

Relics: Bone of the Ancients, Sheriff’s badge, Deputy’s Badge

Honorable mentions: Proficiency relic

Utility:

Slagga (SMG), Trespasser (Sniper Rifle), Grog Nozzle (Pistol), The Sham (Shield), Logan’s Gun (Pistol)

Gameplay Guide

Playstyle: Salvador is very much about

Playstyle: Salvador’s playstyle is based around Gunzerking at all times, as it provides you with the most damage output. Through the combination of the Brawn tree and/or the interactions with Moxxi guns, he can also afford to be closer to enemies, and being able to only hip fire while Gunzerking facilitates this idea as well. Through the use of skills like Get Some and Yippee-Ki-Yay, you can Gunzerk practically indefinitely as long as you are damaging and killing enemies enough. Salvador focuses on using high powered, close range guns that work well with his playstyle and skills. Salvador rewards the player for up close, risky play styles and for taking damage.

Raiding: In general, raiding and boss killing is where Salvador and his damage potential truly excels. Due to certain aspects of Salvador’s Gunzerk (glitches), he has very fast raid boss kill times. Sal’s usual gameplan in Raiding is heavy use of high powered guns (Interfacer, Unkempt Harold, etc) while off handing a Lady Fist for the extra critical hit damage, and a Grog Nozzle for the healing and Slag when needed. Another important note, when off-handing the Amigo Sincero or Trespasser your main hand gun will be able to penetrate shields. Especially useful for killing Chief Ngwatu in Voracidous’ fight (Note: This will enrage Voracidous, but dealing with no shield is completely worth killing Chief for) and for knocking off Pyro Pete’s helmet to allow for crits on him while he still has his shield up. (Sal can also abuse bugs that allow him to deal extremely large amounts of damage with methods such as “Pimperhabbing” and “Infinishot.” Look these up for more details)

Leveling:

Simple Leveling Info: Salvador has one of, if not the hardest, early to mid leveling experience due to his dependence on needed Gunzerking uptime, as well as being forced to use poor weapon combinations during Gunzerk. Like was mentioned earlier, the power of Salvador starts to shine once you get into higher levels.

Rampage Start: 5-30 (Normal Mode)

https://www.lootlemon.com/class/salvador#_00000000000_50550005050_00000000000

In the early game, it is recommended to start off with the Rampage tree, working down to “Infinite Gunzerk”. Prioritize taking Inconceivable>Last Longer>I’m Ready Already>Yippie Ki Yay. Because of this, you can spec into Get Some.

The skills in Rampage are core to Salvador as a whole, so the skills you end up building into TVHM generally end up branching off of this build.

Money shot chain: 31-50 (TVHM) https://www.lootlemon.com/class/salvador#_55000150100_50550105150_01000000000

This maximizes Salvador’s money shot chain playstyle, combining the synergy between Money Shot and Inconceivable. You could also get a class mod that boosts money shot further, but it’s often seen as overkill until you get into late game bossing.

Deputy Salvador: 31-50 (TVHM):

The skill tree for this setup is very, very similar to the previous one, and just mainly switches inconceivable to Filled to the Brim.

Now, the important distinction with this is the items you use. The Deputy Sal playstyle revolves around transferring the maximum bonus from Money Shot onto an otherwise low-magazine weapon, such as a Jakobs shotgun. You do this by holding a weapon with a 12+ magazine in your other hand.

Hoarder: 31-50 (TVHM):

This build focuses on maximizing your ammo regen and reducing ammo consumption as much as possible. The build is named after the Hoarder class mod, which not only gives you ammo regen of its own, but also boosts skills that are all helpful in making this build work as well as it does. Good option if you like fast firing weapons, or otherwise want to make sure you do not run out of ammo

Either way, at this point, Salvador’s power should become apparent as you begin to approach UVHM.

Builds

Mainstream Common Sal Build: The average Salvador build that uses a DPUH/Interfacer and Grog Nozzle. (If using Interfacer, spec out of Steady as She Goes). Uses potential Money Shot Chains to have a massive DPS based on chance.

Build: https://www.lootlemon.com/class/salvador#_50503155151_50550105151_05500150000

Chuck80’s Deputy Salvador: Uses Jakobs shotguns for consistent Money Shots for a reliable high average DPS.

Build: https://www.lootlemon.com/class/salvador#_55005155101_05550105150_45500105000

Hoarder Salvador: This build focuses on the Hoarder or Legendary Hoarder class mod and some skills to shoot weapons at a high fire rate without reloading. https://www.lootlemon.com/class/salvador#_55004105141_50050155151_55000155000

Titan Salvador: This build, and variations of it, make use of the purple Chaotic Good/Evil Monk COMs or the Legendary Titan COM to have a Salvador that does not rely on Moxxi healing. It is highly recommended to use a purple Chaotic Monk with +5 on Money Shot, +4 on Sexual Tyrannosaurus, and +4/+3 on Asbestos – as Legendary Titan does not boost Sexual Tyrannosaurus. This build can, and works very well with Moxxi weapons to deal damage rather than healing, such as the kitten or Slow Hand. In general, this build trades DPS for survivability through natural healing.

Build: https://www.lootlemon.com/class/salvador#_55000055100_50550004140_55205155020

Main Hand Deputy Salvador: WIth this spec, you will be using main hand shotguns (mostly Hyperion – such as the Interfacer or a non-unique Thinking) to deal massive damage and chain Money shots in order to deal massive damage. As opposed to off-hand Deputy Salvador, this build has the shotgun in the main hand with a mag size that can achieve full money shot bonus, and takes Inconceivable for more duration, and longer money shot chains.

Build: https://www.lootlemon.com/class/salvador#_55000155141_25550004150_05500155000

Alternative Titan Salvador: This Titan Sal goes all the way down to pick up Come At Me, Bro, while sacrificing a bit of damage in the form of losing points in Out of Bubblegum.

If you want, you can also move points from Asbestos into Lay Waste or Out of Bubblegum if you want to get some of that damage back.

Build: https://www.lootlemon.com/class/salvador#_55000050100_50055005150_55505115051

Alternative Deputy Salvador: This deputy Sal has a bit more focus on natural survivability and sustainability, through the use of more skills in right tree, to further sustain upkeep of main-handing a Lady Fist instead of the Grog Nozzle to massively increase your DPS output. This build also uses a purple Chaotic Evil Monk COM with +4 on Sexual Tyrannosaurus for more healing.

Build: https://www.lootlemon.com/class/salvador#_55005054101_05450105150_55105104020