Borderlands 2 DLC guide: how to master the Mechromancer

Recently, I was given a Level 50 Mechromancer to play around with. Once I'd got my head around how BIG the numbers are at Level 50 (a critical hit from my sniper rifle knocks off so many points that the game actually abbreviates the damage), I calmed down and started working out how the hell to use this creature.

With 46 skill points to spend, it's like I've been given a shopping trolley by Dale Winton and been told to go wild in a three-aisle supermarket. Gaige's first point - her special ability - is a summoned robot, Deathtrap. He's a large alloy project who floats, slashes and burns his way around the battlefield. His appearance changes, depending on your specialities, and he lasts for a good couple of minutes, boosting your damage with more flexibility and stamina than a turret, but less direct control.

Frequently, you'll feel like you're helping him out, rather than the other way around. He's a quad threat of autonomous AI, bullet-baiting, crowd control, and damage-delivery. He's also got the longest cooldown of Borderlands 2's active abilities, with a full 60 seconds before Gaige can summon him again.

In Aisle 1 of the Tesco Express that is Gaige's skill tree, we have Best Friends Forever. This is the one that caused the brief and annoying "Girlfriend Mode" controversy. The idea was that levelling up in BFF would make the game easier.

"Close Enough" gives stray bullets a chance to ricochet and cause half-damage. "Cooking Up Damage" lets you regenerate up to 2% of your health when you have a full clip - a restriction that prevents you healing in the middle of a battle. Skills like "The Better Half", which boost your rate of fire in the last half of your clip, only make sense for SMGs and Assault Rifles, and are utterly useless with Jakob's gear, which fire as fast as your finger pulls the trigger. This is the first sign of Gaige's having an in-built weapon preferences.

Every one of the skills in this tree are passive skills - quicker shield recharging, boosted max health, faster fire rates. The only things that look like active skills are activated by Deathtrap's AI. It's not a "Girlfriend mode" so much as a "I just like shooting my guns" mode, and given the complexities of the other two trees, BFFs might seem like a blessed relief.

Take Ordered Chaos, over in on Aisle 3. This offers a whole new and heavily involved way to play Gaige. She has a combat currency all of her own. Empty a clip or kill an enemy during a battle, and you'll get one stack of anarchy, up to a potential limit of 400, assuming you invest in the cap-boosting skill, Preshrunk Cyberpunk.

Each one of these stacks boost your damage by 1.75% (to a limit, then, of 700%) - with a corresponding reduction in accuracy. How you boost or reduce anything by 700% is beyond us. It's hard to imagine what you'd end up hitting with a -600% accuracy stat. Maybe you'd end up scoring a headshot on coherent arithmetic.

The Anarchy you build up isn't just for turning you into an ultra-powerful but flailing Catherine Wheel of ordinance. The rest of the tree gives you different ways to earn and spend Anarchy stacks. "Rational Anarchists" gives you a bundle of 25 Anarchy to start off your stack. Then "Death From Above" lets you spend Anarchy stacks by firing and jumping for boosted damage, and "With Claws" lets you ramp up your melee power - the only way Gaige can make her fists anywhere near as deadly as Zer0. Deathtrap is completely ignored in this column, but even with his base stats and abilities, he's a powerful ally.