Harlowe’s builds are explosive, to say the least.
The best Harlowe builds in Borderlands 4 take full advantage of the Gravitar’s experience as a former Maliwan combat scientist, using her mastery of battlefield manipulation and the elements to great effect. Oddly enough, Harlowe feels the most like the traditional Siren we’ve come to know, more so than the best Vex builds, despite her reliance on tech.
Nevertheless, the Gravitar brings much more to the table than you’d initially expect, so I’ll go over three of the best Harlowe builds at max level below. I’ll cover the skills, augments, and capstones to pick, alongside gear that works with them to make this character shine.Best Harlowe builds in Borderlands 4
Harlowe has three unique skill trees, each with their own associated action skill, just like the other Vault Hunters in Borderlands 4:
Creative Bursts: Focuses on Harlowe’s Chroma Accellerator, dealing elemental damage, causing status effects, and action skill spamming. There are also many perks that boost weapon DPS, whether through rate of fire, elemental buffs (radiation or cryo), or straight-up damage increases.
Seize the Day: This is the premier AoE tree in perhaps the entire game, built around putting multiple enemies in stasis so that they share damage thanks to Harlowe’s unique trait. There are lots of boosts to both weapon and ability power, with an emphasis once more on cryo damage.
Cosmic Brilliance: Unquestionably the most team-focused tree in the game, you can buff allies’ shields, reload speed, action skill cooldown, cryo/radiation damage, lifesteal, and even add ricochets into the mix. That’s not to say there aren’t some selfish perks, though, as this tree also has lots of effects that only apply to you, like making your melee elemental, bonus damage the larger your overshield is, and gamma ray shots.
Harlowe’s trait is Entanglement: Whenever Harlowe uses her action skill, any enemies damaged/affected become entangled. Entangled enemies share a portion of both gun and skill damage with all other entangled enemies.
Now I’ll go over three Harlowe builds, starting with what’s generally her strongest setup for most situations, Creative Bursts/Chroma Accelerator. I’ve listed the skills, augments, and captones in the order you’ll want to pick them up, though remember that you can respec if you’d like to tweak things while levelling.
Primary skill tree: Creative Bursts
Action skill: Chroma Accelerator
Favoured element: Radiation
One of Harlowe’s defining traits across all her trees is her knack for elemental damage and status effects, and this build uses that for some truly remarkable single-target and AoE radiation damage.
