Axton — Borderlands 2 Game of the Year eGuide

AS THE COMMANDO

Okay, this Sergeant Axton jerk should’ve been dead. Official Dahl PMC reports say he was scheduled for summary execution, but he disappeared. Somehow, he managed to escape the firing squad by stealing one of Dahl’s transports. Now he’s here on Pandora - presumably to lay low, since Dahl isn’t exactly forgiving when you make them look like chumps. Though “laying low” is relative, since Axton’s a bit of a showboat—he just loves combat and adores letting his enemies know how much better he is than them. You know, if he wasn’t being such a pain in my ass, I might actually like this guy.

Action Skill: SABRE TURRET

Axton’s Action Skill deploys his Dahl Sabre-class auto-turret. While deployed the Sabre Turret automatically fires at nearby enemies for its duration. It can be attacked and even destroyed by foes—in fact, one of the nicest benefits of the Sabre Turret is the attention it diverts away from Axton and other Vault Hunters. The turret’s base cooldown after it deactivates is 42 seconds, though you can reduce this a few ways: by reclaiming the turret before it disappears, which reduces your cooldown interval; by investing in skills that reduce turret cooldown; and by equipping Relics and class mods that reduce Action Skill cooldown. In co-op games, your friends may also be wearing items that reduce cooldown for the Action Skills of the entire team.

Dahl’s Sabre Turret line is much more customizable and aggressively focused than the Atlas Scorpio Turret used by Roland during the events of the first Borderlands. Ultimately, the Scorpio was about defense and replenishment, and Roland himself was more of a medic than a gunner, but the Sabre is about pushing forward, and Axton is a straightforward damage-dealing character. Axton’s skill trees offer several different ways to alter the Sabre turret so that it’s more powerful in its armaments and more flexible in its deployment.

Guerrilla

Axton’s green skill tree is mostly based around strengthening his Action Skill, the Dahl Sabre Turret. Axton’s Action Skill involves a deployable, and there are lots of ways to tailor it to your preference or to a specific situation. Buffing your Sabre Turret almost always involves going at least halfway up the Guerrilla tree so you can obtain the Sentry, Laser Sight, and Scorched Earth skills. This results in a Sabre Turret that fires more ammo, and more accurately, with rocket salvos to boot. After that, if you’re just going for the best possible Sabre Turret, you can continue to the Guerrilla capstone skill for a Slag-capable turret, or trudge up the Survival tree so you can deploy two Sabre Turrets at once, each with Phalanx Shields!

Apart from enhancing the Sabre Turret, there are also a few general performance boosts for Axton. Most noteworthy are the Willing skill, which grants gigantic boosts to shield recharge performance, and Onslaught, perhaps the most appealing kill skill in the game. (When capped, +30% gun damage and +60% movement speed after a kill? Potentially more than doubled through the right Relic? Sure, that sounds all right.)

TIER 1

Sentry

Increases the number of shots your Sabre Turret fires in each burst. Also increases your Sabre Turret’s Duration.

Level 1	Shots fired per burst: +1, Turret Duration: +2 seconds
Level 2	Shots fired per burst: +2, Turret Duration: +4 seconds
Level 3	Shots fired per burst: +3, Turret Duration: +6 seconds
Level 4	Shots fired per burst: +4, Turret Duration: +8 seconds
Level 5	Shots fired per burst: +5, Turret Duration: +10 seconds

Ready

Increases your Reload Speed.

Level 1	Reload Speed: +8%
Level 2	Reload Speed: +16%
Level 3	Reload Speed: +24%
Level 4	Reload Speed: +32%
Level 5	Reload Speed: +40%

TIER 2

Laser Sight

Increases the Accuracy of your Sabre Turret.

Level 1	Turret Accuracy: +10%
Level 2	Turret Accuracy: +20%
Level 3	Turret Accuracy: +30%
Level 4	Turret Accuracy: +40%
Level 5	Turret Accuracy: +50%

Willing

Improves your Shield Recharge Rate and Shield Recharge Delay.

Level 1	Shield Recharge Rate: +15%, Shield Recharge Delay: -12%
Level 2	Shield Recharge Rate: +30%, Shield Recharge Delay: -24%
Level 3	Shield Recharge Rate: +45%, Shield Recharge Delay: -36%
Level 4	Shield Recharge Rate: +60%, Shield Recharge Delay: -48%
Level 5	Shield Recharge Rate: +75%, Shield Recharge Delay: -60%

TIER 3

Onslaught

Kill skill. Killing an enemy increases your Gun Damage and Movement Speed for a short time.

Level 1	Gun Damage: +6%, Movement Speed: +12%
Level 2	Gun Damage: +12%, Movement Speed: +24%
Level 3	Gun Damage: +18%, Movement Speed: +36%
Level 4	Gun Damage: +24%, Movement Speed: +48%
Level 5	Gun Damage: +30%, Movement Speed: +60%

Scorched Earth

Adds Multi-Rocket Pods to your Sabre Turret.

Level 1

22 rockets per volley

Able

Damaging an enemy causes you to regenerate health for a few seconds. This effect does not stack multiple times.

Level 1	Regenerates 0.4% of your Maximum Health per second. Duration: 3 seconds
Level 2	Regenerates 0.8% of your Maximum Health per second. Duration: 3 seconds
Level 3	Regenerates 1.2% of your Maximum Health per second. Duration: 3 seconds
Level 4	Regenerates 1.6% of your Maximum Health per second. Duration: 3 seconds
Level 5	Regenerates 2.0% of your Maximum Health per second. Duration: 3 seconds

TIER 4

Grenadier

Increases the maximum number of grenades you can carry.

Level 1	Grenade Capacity: +1
Level 2	Grenade Capacity: +2
Level 3	Grenade Capacity: +3
Level 4	Grenade Capacity: +4
Level 5	Grenade Capacity: +5

TIER 5

Crisis Management

You gain bonus Gun Damage and Melee Damage when your shields are depleted.

Level 1	Gun Damage: +7%, Melee Damage: +6%
Level 2	Gun Damage: +14%, Melee Damage: +12%
Level 3	Gun Damage: +21%, Melee Damage: +18%
Level 4	Gun Damage: +28%, Melee Damage: +24%
Level 5	Gun Damage: +35%, Melee Damage: +30%

TIER 6

Double Up

Adds a second gun to your Sabre Turret and changes both guns to fire Slag bullets. Slagged enemies take bonus damage from all non-Slag attacks.

Level 1

+100% more turret guns

Gunpowder

Building up Axton’s blue Gunpowder tree lets you enhance combat in general, while also making Sabre Turret deployment more flexible. Eventually, the Sabre Turret can basically become a Longbow nuke that happens to also drop a turret! Picking the Steady skill and the tier four gamechanger Do Or Die also lets Axton users focus on rocket launcher and grenade damage, if desired. (The Grenadier skill in the Guerrilla tree can enhance this end, as well.)

If you’re interested in kill skills, Metal Storm pairs magnificently with other Axton kill skills like Onslaught. The Ranger skill, the last you’ll have access to before the capstone, is like a free swatch of Badass Tokens—you get subtle bonuses to a lot of things, rather than focused bonuses on two or three categories.

And note that the Battlefront skill, located in the third tier of the Gunpowder tree, grants combat buffs to all damage types for Axton while his turret is deployed. In combat, the turret is more likely to be deployed than not, so this is no small benefit.

Capstone: Nuke

The Sabre Turret, when it deploys, will cause a nuclear blast. Seriously. It goes without saying that this is damaging to creatures near the blast, because probably the only thing that could be next to a nuclear explosion without being terribly damaged is another nuclear explosion. There’s a good reason why Longbow Turret is another skill in this same tree—it can be problematic deploying a Sabre Turret simply by underhand-tossing it when it is going to create a nuclear blast. So be careful, and aim those tosses with some loft—or pick Longbow.

Of Axton’s capstone skills, all of which dramatically alter the Sabre Turret in some way, this is the most direct. You can suddenly just think of the Sabre Turret as a really, really powerful Bouncing Betty grenade that you get to throw about once a minute: it explodes ferociously, and then a bullet-spamming kill pillar emerges from the mushroom cloud. You don’t get a Slagging second barrel or a second turret entirely to deploy as with Double Up or Gemini, but you do get to nuke things.