Maya — Borderlands 2 Game of the Year eGuide

AS THE SIREN

A Siren? Really? What is it with Sirens and Vault Hunting? Anyway, this one, Maya, hails from the lush, verdant world of Athenas, where the ignorant locals worshipped her like a goddess. All this adoration came at the price of severe boredom, and she rebelled against the monastic order that sheltered her. This “disagreement” ended when she shot the head monk straight in the face. Ouch. So now Maya’s on Pandora looking to understand more about her Siren powers. And melt faces with her mind. And, of course, annoy the crap out of me.

Action Skill: PHASELOCK

Maya channels her Siren energy into a powerful offensive Action Skill she calls Phaselock. As Sirens’ powers manifest, they take form in a single spell specifically tailored to each individual Siren. Lilith had Phasewalk, Maya has Phaselock, and… you get the picture. Phaselock allows Maya to entrap a single foe in a hyper-dense anomaly of space-time, and then proceed to rend them asunder in a variety of ways that would be cruel and unacceptable to normal, decent people. Inside this little bubble of pain, Maya can assault her enemy with crushing force, all sorts of Elemental damage, and even destroy their mind, turning them into her own little slave.

Maya’s brain, or body, or spirit, or whatever it is that generates power for Sirens has a different interpretation of warping the Phase field. Center a foe in the reticle and activate Phaselock, and Maya beckons at them with her hand outstretched palm-up. As she raises her hand up skyward, so too are they hoisted off the ground and suspended, incapable of motion. An enemy suspended by Phaselock is utterly ineffectual—they can’t resist, break free, counterattack, or defend themselves. They are in stasis, totally vulnerable to anything you choose to do. You can use Phaselock to remove the toughest enemy from the battlefield so you can focus on underlings without worry of the biggest baddy stomping on you, or you can Phaselock the toughest target so you can pepper away at them without any fear of reprisal until they drop free of Phaselock.

Skills can modify Phaselock in several ways, from adding the Singularity function of grenades with Converge, to lighting on fire the Phaselock target and anyone around him, to several other functions. Phaselock is essentially a customizable instant Longbow Singularity grenade you get to use about four times a minute! It can be tailored to replenish health, to buff Maya for its duration, to control crowds, to deal scalding status effect damage, and finally to control crowds while dealing scalding status effect damage. And by adding the Res skill, it also turns Maya into the default white mage for the party, giving her the ability to revive downed friends from far away.

Phaselock has the shortest cooldown of any Action Skill, recharging in only 13 seconds. Of course, you can shrink this lower still through equipment and skills. Phaselock hits diminishing returns if you reapply it to the same target, but this should only become an issue against Super Badasses or better; few other things can last that long, if you’re actually trying to kill them. But some targets are too bulky or powerful to lift with Phaselock. You cannot, for example, Phaselock and lift a Hyperion Constructor. Instead, the few hostiles stout enough to avoid being constricted take really heavy damage all at once. And that’s it; Phaselock is just over. If you have skills like Helios and Ruin, those area-of-effect explosive splashes still happen, centered around where Phaselock struck. (This means that Phaselock can remain incredibly potent even in situations where it can hardly lift anything, like against very serious thresher swarms.) But there’s no suspension period or anything, and cooldown restarts right away.

Motion

Motion is a tree that allows you to basically redesign Maya’s Phaselock, if you choose. In the first tier, it just offers general combat upgrades; slow to start, but Ward can be a big help keeping Maya alive, and if that’s not a concern, then increased bullet damage and speed never hurt, right? (Well, the target is hurt.)Motion also includes two kill skills and another for depleted shields, designed for survivability. The rest of it is given over to extending or altering Phaselock. Converge, like all Maya’s one-point-wonder skills, is a completely appealing skill that turns Phaselock into a Singularity grenade also. Virtually the only reason not to have this is if you’re insistent upon building to Res and Ruin in co-op play, which also precludes getting Converge. Quicken and Suspension together will increase Phaselock length and shorten its cooldown; being able to have Phaselock active more and more of the time amplifies the bonus you’ll get if you also build to the Wreck, Elated, and Chain Reaction skills.

Sub-Sequence sets up a curious possibility: maxed out, this guarantees that if Phaselock has duration left when a monster dies, it will seek out another target. This means you can get more than one Harmony tree Sweet Release reward per Phaselock cast! Let’s say the entire team is in bad shape against a varkid swarm. Adults and Badasses are the reasons you’re in trouble, but there happen to be a ton of weak Larval Varkids around, too. Phaselock a weak one on purpose, kill it immediately… Phaselock swaps to another weak varkid, which you also kill immediately… and it swaps again, and you get yet another kill… and so on, and before you now it your whole team is rocking full health almost from nowhere! And Thoughtlock speaks for itself. While Thoughtlock still serves the primary purpose of crowd control and mild general damage to an area, it accomplishes these things in a totally different way than conventional Phaselock.

Gamechanger: Converge

Converge makes Phaselock mimic Singularity grenades. When you Phaselock and therefore levitate and incapacitate a given target, any nearby enemy will also be pulled suddenly toward them. This is useful for pure crowd control purposes, and it becomes even more potent if you also select skills from the Cataclysm tree that also give Phaselock strong damage—pulling enemies together into a bunch becomes much more useful when they’re splashed in flames and caustic fluid as a result, thanks to Helios, Cloud Kill, and Ruin. Converge also works well with Scorn, if you opt to cap the Harmony tree—Phaselock an adversary central to as many as possible, then immediately throw Scorn’s Orb of Slag right down the barrel of them all. The Orb of Slag will slowly drag its churning mass across everyone, damaging and Slagging the lot of them! Maya’s Converge skill, in general, is like her Res skill in co-op—once you’ve used it, it’s hard to imagine not using it.

Capstone: Thoughtlock

The capstone for the Motion tree fundamentally changes Phaselock into a new Action Skill entirely. Instead of the victim being lifted up and constricted, they have their allegiance flipped to Maya’s for the duration of the Action Skill! In effect, any enemy that can be held by Phaselock is a Raging Goliath-on-demand. And if you picked up Converge along the way to unlocking Thoughtlock (of course you did), that still works—so when you Thoughtlock a foe, they’ll have targets pulled right to them, for instant bedlam! Monsters will be afflicted with Thoughtlock for four seconds longer than they’d be strung up by Phaselock, so you’ll have to wait four extra seconds between Thoughtlocks.

Note that you do receive XP for kills scored by your temporary ally, but if the monster you snared with Thoughtlock is killed by an enemy, you’ll receive no XP.

TIER 1

Ward

Improves your Shield Capacity and Shield Recharge Delay.

Level 1	Shield Capacity: +5%, Shield Recharge Delay: -8%
Level 2	Shield Capacity: +10%, Shield Recharge Delay: -16%
Level 3	Shield Capacity: +15%, Shield Recharge Delay: -24%
Level 4	Shield Capacity: +20%, Shield Recharge Delay: -32%
Level 5	Shield Capacity: +25%, Shield Recharge Delay: -40%

Accelerate

Increases Damage and Bullet Speed with all gun types.

Level 1	Gun Damage: +3%, Bullet Speed: +4%
Level 2	Gun Damage: +6%, Bullet Speed: +8%
Level 3	Gun Damage: +9%, Bullet Speed: +12%
Level 4	Gun Damage: +12%, Bullet Speed: +16%
Level 5	Gun Damage: +15%, Bullet Speed: +20%

TIER 2

Suspension

Increases the duration of Phaselock.

Level 1	Phaselock duration: +0.5 seconds
Level 2	Phaselock duration: +1.0 seconds
Level 3	Phaselock duration: +1.5 seconds
Level 4	Phaselock duration: +2.0 seconds
Level 5	Phaselock duration: +2.5 seconds

Kinetic Reflection

Kill skill. After killing an adversary, you gain the ability to deflect enemy bullets, sending them flying toward nearby foes. You take reduced damage from deflected bullets. Kinetic Reflection only works with bullets. This effect lasts for a short time.

Level 1	Deflection Chance: 100%, Dmg. Reduction: 10%, Deflected Bullet Dmg.: 20%
Level 2	Deflection Chance: 100%, Dmg. Reduction: 20%, Deflected Bullet Dmg.: 40%
Level 3	Deflection Chance: 100%, Dmg. Reduction: 30%, Deflected Bullet Dmg.: 60%
Level 4	Deflection Chance: 100%, Dmg. Reduction: 40%, Deflected Bullet Dmg.: 80%
Level 5	Deflection Chance: 100%, Dmg. Reduction: 50%, Deflected Bullet Dmg.: 100%

TIER 3

Fleet

You Movement Speed increases while your shields are depleted.

Level 1	Movement Speed: +10%
Level 2	Movement Speed: +20%
Level 3	Movement Speed: +30%
Level 4	Movement Speed: +40%
Level 5	Movement Speed: +50%

Converge

Action Skill augmentation. Your Phaselock ability now also pulls nearby enemies toward the original target. This deals a small amount of damage to the affected foes.

Level 1

“Gather thine enemies together that thou mayest blow them to tiny bits.”

Inertia

Kill skill. Killing an enemy causes your shields to quickly regenerate and increases your Reload Speed for a few seconds.

Level 1	Regenerates 0.8% of your shield per second. Reload Speed: +10%
Level 2	Regenerates 1.6% of your shield per second. Reload Speed: +20%
Level 3	Regenerates 2.4% of your shield per second. Reload Speed: +30%
Level 4	Regenerates 3.2% of your shield per second. Reload Speed: +40%
Level 5	Regenerates 4.0% of your shield per second. Reload Speed: +50%

TIER 4

Quicken

Increases the Cooldown Rate of your Phaselock ability.

Level 1	Phaselock Cooldown Rate: +6%
Level 2	Phaselock Cooldown Rate: +12%
Level 3	Phaselock Cooldown Rate: +18%
Level 4	Phaselock Cooldown Rate: +24%
Level 5	Phaselock Cooldown Rate: +30%

TIER 5

Sub-Sequence

Action Skill augmentation. When an enemy under the effects of your Phaselock dies, there is a chance for your Phaselock ability to seek out and affect another target.

Level 1	Chance to Phaselock another target: 20%
Level 2	Chance to Phaselock another target: 40%
Level 3	Chance to Phaselock another target: 60%
Level 4	Chance to Phaselock another target: 80%
Level 5	Chance to Phaselock another target: 100%

TIER 6

Thoughtlock

Action Skill alteration. Phaselock causes enemies to turn on their friends instead of being locked down. Additionally, Phaselock’s Duration is increased, but so is its Cooldown.

Level 1

+100% more enemy-on-enemy combat. Phaselock Duration: +4 seconds, Phaselock Cooldown: +3 seconds

Harmony

In Harmony, we see Maya become a partial spiritual successor to Roland, as the Vault Hunter best able to build to be a real medic for both herself and the others. That doesn’t mean Maya can’t also kick ass—for raw damage to groups of targets, Maya’s Cataclysm tree cannot be beat, and that’s something no other character does really well innately. But for teamwork and getting out of binds in co-op, it’s hard to argue with having multiple ways to heal friends and being capable of remotely raising them! The impact of remote revives with Res is obvious, but Restoration in particular can also force a rethink of how you play. If a Zero or Salvador on your team is mucking it up right in the grills of some baddies, you can switch to a weapon with lots of splash damage, like a rocket launcher or any Torgue-barreled gun, to completely turn the tables in your teammates’ favor —healing them up while blasting their aggressors to bits.

Other skills are primarily tailored to keeping Maya herself filled with all that good red blood, but if you’re looking to boost shield ability also, you’ll have to look in the Motion tree. The capstone is a bit from left field, but it’s a delightful and unique addition to Maya’s potential arsenal. To some degree, every character can actually be many characters through skills, but only Maya gets to essentially be three mage characters who are totally different!

It’s worth noting that thanks to the odd confluence of health-related survival skills here paired with a capstone that alters the melee function, Maya can be made into a kind of flaming glass cannon Zero… the Orb of Slag itself is wide and slow enough to actually make a good melee range tool, which happens to inflict Slag. There are shields to be found that trigger tremendous melee bonuses but only when shields are depleted, and here there are several skills strictly devoted to health regen, none to improving shields. There are, of course, bladed weapons that will always improve melee damage and Relics to improve it further still. And then halfway down the Cataclysm tree, you’ll find Backdraft, enhancing melee and causing powerful Helios-like fire blasts whenever your shield is depleted! And that’s not mentioning that as you’re swinging away with whatever buffs you bring along, you’ll still have Phaselock. Sirens!

Gamechanger: Res

Res allows your Phaselock skill to act as an immediate ranged revive. Sure, any character can revive a downed ally, but they have to actually get over there and hold the button for basically ever in order to do so. Phaselock’s range is practically unlimited. If you can see your buddy, you can res them. If you’re having trouble aiming a really distant Phaselock res, scope in first with an scope weapon and then Phaselock while aiming.

During solo play, Res is less than useless, and you should respec that valuable skill point somewhere else. Who are you trying to res? Stop doing that to yourself; you’ll go blind. But in co-op play, Res is one of the most important skills there is. When your party is falling all over themselves trying to down a group of Badasses, being the Res-equipped Maya in the back will make you the star of the show.

Capstone: Scorn

The first half of the Harmony tree is given over primarily to healing the party; the last half leading up to the capstone is about reflecting damage and healing Maya herself. Your reward for making it to the end of the Harmony tree is something completely different: Maya’s melee attack is overridden by a unique attack in which Maya unleashes a slow Orb of Slag in whatever direction you’re facing. Along its path, the orb is virtually guaranteed to Slag whatever it touches, while dealing some contact damage—not heavy, but something.

Capping Harmony for the Orb of Slag means you won’t be grabbing the Ruin or Thoughtlock capstones, so your Phaselock itself will remain relatively humdrum, and the most synergy you can add is by going to Converge in the Motion tree. Your Phaselock will let you set up groups of targets, the better to Slag several at once with the Orb.

The cooldown time on the Orb of Slag is 18 seconds—during this time, pressing the melee button gets you a regular melee attack. Picking Scorn forces you to be a little more careful with certain tricks, or eliminate them from your repertoire altogether.