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Borderlands 4 Build

Bloodsucker Vex - Use ANY Gun - Generalist Vex Build UVH5

Vex

Incarnate

End Game

Creator

By Arachnica

Updated on Nov 11, 2025

Nov 11, 2025

Build Overview

This Vex build aims to be able to do it all while having the ability to use it all.

Through focusing almost entirely on Vex's green tree, this build utilizes a mix of Kill Skills and Vex's powerful bonus elements to get a wide array of stats with some impactful ways of further amplifying our guns.

While on average a bit less powerful than more focused set ups for fire rate, one shots, or other specific weapon types, this build easily makes up for in sheer diversity of usable weapons and bossing methods. Along with that, this is a build that will scale incredibly well with level cap increases and will likely outpace others later on.

This guide is going to get technical at times, though feel free to ignore any of that unless you too enjoy the inner workings of builds. That being said, the rest of this section will be a quick reference for relevant formulas that will be elaborated on further in this guide. If you are interested in other formulas, you can check out my Deadeye Vex guide to learn more about Blood Shot or Ratore's Vex Damage Formula Guide for all of them in even more depth.

Basic Gun Damage Formula
Base * (1 + Amp) * (1 + Enhancement Gun + Enhancement Weapon Type + High Caliber Tier 2 Gun Damage) * [(1 + Gun Damage + Elemental Damage + Damage dealt + Splash + Debuff) + (1 + Card Crit + (2 * (Crit))] * Elemental Effectiveness

From this point onward,
(1 + Gun Damage + Elemental Damage + Damage dealt + Splash + Debuff) will simply be shortened to (1 + Scale)
(1 + Enhancement Gun + Enhancement Weapon Type) will be shortened to (1 + EnScale)

Bonus Element Formula
[(Base * (1 + Amp)) x Bonus%] * (1 + EnScale) * [(1 + Scale) + (1 + CardCrit + 2 * {CritScale})] * Elemental Effectiveness

Strengths And Weaknesses

Weapon Diversity
Very tanky through lifesteal and the Teen Witch
Mobbing
Bossing

Somewhat weaker than more focused builds (though still more than viable)

Build Variants

Default

Crit Knife

Dead Ringer & Coven

This is the most simple and widely-applicable version of this build.

Skill Tree

Default

Crit Knife

Dead Ringer & Coven

Points Spent 0 / 49

LMB Allocate

RMB Unallocate

1/3

5/5

1/3

5/5

3/3

5/5

3/3

Blood Is Power, Leeching Attunement, Essence Leech
Blood is Power is an incredibly strong skill, giving 300% of our lifesteal as a kinetic bonus element. Bonus elements are additional elemental damage added as another instance on top of our base damage. For example, if you deal 300 shock damage with 10% additional kinetic, your damage total would be that 300 shock with an additional 30 kinetic. The damage formula for bonus elements is as follows:
[(Base * (1 + Amp)) x Bonus%] * (1 + EnScale) * [(1 + Scale) + (1 + CardCrit + 2 * {CritScale})] * Elemental Effectiveness
Leeching Attunement and Essence Leech are of course taken to buff this bonus element directly. It scales off 300% of our total Lifesteal. Leeching Attunement gives 10% when attuned to Kinetic with Essence Leech giving another 10% overall, doubling to 20% while an action skill is active. This gives us a total of 30% Lifesteal which is converted to a 90% Kinetic bonus element.
Note: Lifesteal from Repkits do not benefit Blood is Power.

If you have 5/5 into Grave Thirst from the Teen Witch, you can actually forego the points in Leeching Attunement to put elsewhere.

Ars Arcana
Skill damage is incredibly effective for this build since it applies to bonus elements gained from our trees, being a very nice boost for the damage we get from Blood is Power.
Note: While currently we don't have the points for it, Blood Is Magic does also apply to bonus elements despite saying it's specifically action skill damage.
BIGGER NOTE: Skill Damage DOES NOT currently apply to Blood Is Power, making Ars Arcana actually kinda worthless right now. Considering skill damage bonuses DO apply to Enchantment, I assume this is a bug. Currently if you want to get some more value out of these 5 points, you could go for Grave Vitality instead, although this is entirely unnecessary and we're currently left in a spot where both skills to get into this branch kinda suck for us right now. This guide is written under the assumption that Blood is Power was getting these bonuses and I'm going to leave it as such since hopefully this will get fixed. If it does, I will remove this edit. If it doesn't, this guide will later be updated to properly reflect that.

Grave Sights, Grave Implements, Grave Power, A Deeper Grave, Mortal Terror
These are all of our Kill Skill related skills.
Grave Sights and Grave Implements are the two kill skills that we grab, Sights giving us 15% crit damage and gun handling per stack with Implements giving 20% per stack. At base, these two skills stack up to 3 times for a total of 45% crit damage and 60% gun damage.
Grave Power allows us to add more stacks, meaning each point in Grave Power effectively gives us an additional 15% crit and 20% gun damage, making those points very effective. However, I only put one point into Grave Power simply due to how Kill Skills function. Each Kill Skill stack has a separate timer from one another. The timer starts on activation and at base, lasts 10 seconds. Activating another Kill Skill in this time does not reset this timer, simply adding another stack with it's own timer on top of the previous. This means stacks decay at different rates from each other and makes it harder to upkeep higher numbers of stacks without specific set ups. Higher fire rate or high pellet count guns can generally upkeep 6 stacks decently well, but if you plan to use a wider variety of guns, it's not very worthwhile to put more than 1-2 points into this skill. 4 stacks total has felt the most consistent to fully upkeep for me, so I leave it at 1.
This is also why I pick up A Deeper Grave, providing an additional 2.4 seconds to the timer of all our Kill Skills. While it's not much, it helps significantly for more consistent mobbing and especially bossing.
Mortal Terror also gives us higher consistency as well as letting us activate our Kill Skills while bossing without having to rely on arena enemies.

Target Prescience
Auto crit to help activate Kill Skills more often through Mortal Terror. Great for enemies with tricky crits or for less accurate guns. While not necessary, it greatly increases bossing consistency.
Note: If you're willing to use the crit knife, you can completely forego these points. Mobbing is fine without it and the crit knife pretty much invalidates the need for this against bosses. These 5 points can be used for some pretty great value elsewhere. See the Crit Knife variant.

Drink Full
Very nice fire rate buff, stacking up to a total of 30%. Fire rate is an incredibly solid stat on just about any gun and this is a pretty big source of it.

Guns and Needles
Great for repkit uptime. Only one point for now, but we're spamming Kill Skills so we still get some big value out of this single point.

Grave Sustenance
Similarly to Guns and Needles, one point here just to help out with action skill uptime during bossing. This is kind of just a comfort point as almost any boss dies long before your skill would run out, but this is kind of the most bang we can get for the final point. Other good options are to put it into Guns and Needles, Fiendish Invigoration, or Mortal Terror.

Skill Choice & Augments
Incarnate is chosen almost solely for the fact that we get more damage through Essence Leech while it's active. It's an additional 30% to the Blood is Power bonus element just from activating our skill, so it's pretty impactful.
Grave Harvest This is our mobbing augment, keeping Incarnate up 100% of the time as long as you're killing enemies and picking up orbs.
Witchy Trigger Finger gives gun damage when we deal damage with Eldritch Blast, stacking up to 45%. This also refills our mag/resets heat, which is incredible for bossing. This lets you literally never have to reload.
Vibe Check is always what I run for capstone mostly due to the cooldown reduction from dealing damage being doubled. This lets us spam it even faster during bossing to keep up with higher fire rates far better.

Equipment

Default

Crit Knife

Dead Ringer & Coven

Weapons

Repkit & Ordnance

Utilities

Gear

Class Mod:
Teen Witch
All that lifesteal we have? Now it applies to shields and gives us overshield! As you'll see in the Shield section, this also translates directly into giving us another bonus element and a multiplicative damage buff through nearly-perpetual amp uptime.

Skill Rolls:
Grave Thirst is our major focus for points with the Teen Witch. at 5/5, we get 7.5% lifesteal per stack up to a base of 3. But since it's a Kill Skill, that goes up to 4 through Grave Power for a total of 30% lifesteal from a single skill. Blood Is Power of course converts this to a 90% buff, meaning our total from Blood is Power can be straight up doubled from these 5 points. Happy farming!
NOTE: It seems that Grave Thirst is currently limited to a max of +3 on this class mod. I'm unsure if this is a bug or intentional, but I'll update the rest of this guide to properly reflect that cap if this isn't something that gets fixed within the coming weeks.

Blood Is Magic is another good option, giving action skill damage based on the fullness of Vex's health. Considering we're pretty much always full, this is almost always active. And while it lists specifically action skill damage, this does still apply to the bonus element from Blood Is Power.

Corporeal is pretty solid, giving us increased overshield capacity and duration along with a bit of a damage buff while we have overshield active. It's nothing too crazy and definitely overkill considering how fast we generate overshield, but not bad.

Conjunction gives up to 30% gun damage based on the fullness of Vex's shield. Another decent damage buff, but nothing too crazy.

Of course as mentioned, Grave Thirst is easily the focus. Luckily, the rest of the skill rolls are pretty great across the board so it doesn't matter too much where those other 2 points go.

Repkit:
Triple Bypass
Most often best in slot option for Repkit. It gives us near constant action skill uptime with Now With Caffeine while also being very spammable during combat to get its buffs.

War Paint
A very long CD repkit, though you're likely to be in the fray with this build so the passive effect will bring it back reasonably quick. This repkit provides fire rate and movement speed, both incredibly nice stats for this build. The fire rate stacks nicely with Drink Full while the movement speed feeds into Bullet Train. This is a far more offensive repkit option.

Repkit Passives:
Ideally you want some sort of damage buff on your roll. Fire Rate (Spasmodic), Enrage (Experimental), Speed (Caffienated) (being a damage buff through Bullet Train) are your best options. Unfortunately, Leech (Parasitic) does not work with Blood Is Power.

Shield:
Watts 4 Dinner
Another bonus element to buff up our damage, though being shock also gives us some added coverage for shields. This bonus elements is only active while Overshield is, but Teen Witch and all our lifesteal keeps that overshield capped almost constantly, giving constant shock damage.
The Watts 4 Dinner also has the advantage of being able to roll with AMP Synergized. Amp is one of the few multiplicative damage bonuses we have access to, meaning it's incredibly impactful. And with the Teen Witch letting our Lifesteal apply to our shields, we can utilize amp very effectively even with higher fire rate weapons to spam out amped shots.
Note: Amp on shields can roll as 50%, 100%, or 150%. I can confirm that the Watts 4 Dinner rolls 50% and 100%, though I have yet to confirm that it can roll 150%, though I'd assume it's possible.

Protean Cell
This shield is a very solid alternative to the Watts, actually providing an even larger shock bonus element at 40%. Unfortunately, the Protean Cell ends up generally weaker than the Watts due to not being able to roll with amp. And as mentioned, amp is a huge damage buff. If you do not have a Watts 4 Dinner with an amp roll, then the Protean Cell wins out. Otherwise, use the Watts.

Enhancements:
Being a very general build, your enhancement should match whatever you're currently using or what matches a majority of your part rolls. The following will be my most commonly used enhancements currently, though I recommend taking a look through the Enhancement Database to look through all the Enhancement abilities and legendary Enhancements.
Note: Gun Damage and Weapon Type Damage (SMG Damage, Sniper Damage, etc.) passive rolls on Enhancments are a multiplicative buff. They're very big damage buffs.

Vladof Bullet Hose - Guns with Vladof-licesnsed parts have a 30% Chance to add an extra Projectile per shot
Vladof Box Magazine - Guns with Vladof-licensed parts gain +20% Fire Rate and +20% Magazine Size
Jakobs Piercer - Guns with Jakobs-licensed parts have a 20% Chance to grant a Critical Hit
Jakobs Sequencer - Guns with Jakobs-Licensed Parts grant consecutive Critical Hits a stacking +5% Bonus Damage for a Maximum of 8 Stacks

And pretty much all the Atlas & COV Enhancements slap.

Ordnance:
Jakobs Grenade
A Penetrator Jakobs knife is easily the best in slot ordnance, though it's quite boring and no longer as strong. Having an additional 30-90% auto crit (as currently it does stack with itself) does mean much more consistent Kill Skill activation during bossing, though it's definitely not necessary if you don't want to use it.

So for some more fun options:

Sho Kunai
This is likely the second best in slot. This isn't an Ordnance build, so we don't have much in the way of buffing Ordnance damage. Sho Kunai isn't good because of it's damage, but rather the utility, giving us 10% movement speed on hit stacking up to 70% which we then translate into damage through Bullet Train.
Note: You can also stack this movement speed buff by throwing the kunai at interactable objects like ammo crates. This means you can prestack movement speed before many bosses.

Bottled Lightning
Dishes out some serious damage even without Ordnance investment. Has a massive AOE on it, so it can be super effective at taking out an entire group.

Jelly
Truly a for fun option, I'm just a fan of the Jelly. You can pick up some kills with this on squishy enemies, and I'm happy enough with that to run it sometimes. Pretty solid for knocking off crystals from Vile enemies, though.

Weapons:
I said this can use anything, and I mean it. This section is gonna be long and is not going to be all-encompassing. I highly recommend experimenting with whatever guns you might think are gonna be fun. I'll give some notes on some stand-outs, list additional guns that I've really enjoyed, and leave you to play around with more.

Mobbing:
Whiskey Foxtrot - A newer love of mine. Got a roll dealing 10k DPS, not sure I need to say more, but I will. The Whiskey Foxtrot can roll with one of two alt-fires. One of them is a shotgun firing arcing projectiles that debuff enemies on hit while the other lets you swap between burst and full auto. Both of these variants are incredibly good, but my favorite is by far the shotgun. Currently I've been running a Whiskey Foxtrot with a Ripper mag and it absolutely shreds.
Wombo Combo - Just a crazy AR that can be a great option for elemental damage. While generally we want to be attuned to kinetic due to Leeching Attunement giving us Blood Is Power damage, the Wombo Combo is more than strong enough to make up for it.
Star Helix - A favorite of mine in BL3 that unfortunately returned a bit weaker in 4. However, a bit weaker than the GOAT is still pretty damn good especially considering all 3 projectiles fired from this thing gets Amp applied to them.
G.M.R. - A very simple yet powerful AR for those that just wanna point and shoot. Highly recommend a Jakobs part.
Bonnie and Clyde - The Blanc from 3 returns in a way cooler form, now swapping between being an AR and a shotgun. Very fun combat loop, super strong gun.
Goalkeeper - The GOATkeeper. The only charge Order AR I've enjoyed using so far. Currently on the hunt to see if it can roll with Ripper.
Lumberjack
First Impression

Seventh Sense - No idea why they buffed this thing. Absolute slapper.
Rangefinder - Very simple pistol option. Nothing super spectacular, but good enough if you just want a very simple pistol to slot in.
Queen's Rest - Actually a very solid option, enough so that I was surprised to see it get buffed. Only issue is that sometimes enemies straight up move faster than the bonus projectiles.
Bully
Lucky Clover

Darkbeast - Great gun, unfortunate that it's corrosive locked.
Luty Madlad

Linebacker - VERY good gun and pretty damn fun. Feels like the Flakker from the previous games, though functions a bit different. Fantastic for just wiping a group of enemies off the face of Kairos.
Hot Slugger - Big damage slug shotgun. Satisfying as hell to use.
Convergence - DPS machine. Great for mobbing, also pretty damn solid for bossing. Another one I question the buff of considering it was still strong as hell prior, but I'll take it!
Bod - Just straight busted. Very simple shotty.
Hellwalker - I'm Hellwanking!!!!

Stray - Sniper go BRRR
Boomslang - Sniper go BOOM
Truck - Sniper go BANG

Bossing:
Complex Root - Makes very quick work of large hitboxes. Less effective against smaller bosses. Comes in all elements, letting you match bosses. A Jakobs part roll is very nice to have.
Kaoson - Witchy Trigger Finger lets us just spam any boss full of stickies and watch them quickly melt. This is easily the most consistent gun to boss with, though boring.
Wombo Combo - Also a very solid bossing gun. Dishes out tons of damage very fast, can melt pretty much anything.
T.K's Wave - Get an Atlas tracker part. It's a gamechanger. Track a boss and start spraying. Keep in mind, actively reloading lets you reload quicker, so spamming 'R' while firing will let you DPS faster.
Convergence - As mentioned, absolute DPS machine especially against larger hitboxes. A bit weaker than other options, but super fun and usually consistent.
Various Underbarrels - Of course, you also have a wide array of underbarrels you can choose from to boss with. Beam Tossers, Spread Launchers, any of the 10-20k base damage underbarrel crowd, really.

Firmware

Default

Crit Knife

Dead Ringer & Coven

Repkit & Ordnance

Repkit FirmwareDeadeye

Ordnance FirmwareTrickshot

Utilities

Class Mod FirmwareDeadeye

Shield FirmwareDeadeye

Enhancement FirmwareTrickshot

Deadeye just simply provides the most raw and widely applicable damage.
Trickshot fills out the final 2 slots nicely, giving us some reload speed and more damage. If you would prefer, 3/3 Trickshot with 2/3 Deadeye is also a very viable option, giving you some additional ammo sustain.

High Caliber is an incredibly good option to replace either Deadeye or Trickshot with. The tier 2 gun damage is multiplicative with other damage types, meaning it can be an incredibly potent damage buff. The pierce can also be incredibly nice with some specific weapons for bossing.

Other Options:
Bullets to Spare - More fire rate and mag size. Great for using more brr-type guns.
Daed-dy O - Great if you're running guns that swap modes a lot like the Bonnie and Clyde.
God Killer - Increased damage to Badasses and a general buff at 3/3.
Heating Up - Some nice buffs if you're running guns with COV mags.
Oscar Mike - An option if you want both damage and fire rate.

Specialization

Default

Crit Knife

Dead Ringer & Coven

Specialization 1Now With Caffeine

Specialization 2The Best Defense

Specialization 3Bullet Train

Specialization 4Riddle You This

Now With Caffeine works differently than most other cooldown reduction, directly cutting 25% from your current cooldown on Repkit activation. This means if your action skills ends and you pop 4 Repkits, it would be back. 3 Repkits instantly refunds 75% of your action skill CD. This is what makes the Triple Bypass so valuable for getting our action skill back up quickly and lets us completely avoid the need for cooldown reduction elsewhere.

The Best Defense is pretty much a free 30% damage buff. Our shield is almost always full due to our lifesteal and Teen Witch, so we almost always have this buff.

Bullet Train lets us run and gun while also giving a damage buff based on how fast we move. Currently we don't have access to very many movement buffs, but even still this Specialization is pretty helpful and will only become more valuable with more points. Also synergizes very well with the War Paint.

Riddle You This is also pretty much just free damage, stacking up to 50% gun damage while you're dealing damage.

In The Zone is another option, giving up to 25% gun and 25% crit damage the longer you aim down sights. If you find yourself ADSing a lot, this can be a nice buff.

Gameplay

General

Mobbing gameplay for the most part is incredibly simple. Keep your health and shields up while you commit atrocities against the denizens of Kairos in whatever manner you deem fit. This effectively just means keep shooting and killing, keeping your Kill Skills up and your health full through your lifesteal. Sometimes you might want to back away if you take a big hit, but otherwise, your lifesteal will do the heavy lifting.
You can either choose one repkit or cycle them as you need them. Both the War Paint and Triple Bypass can be great options for mobbing, it mostly depends on how you feel about swapping mid combat or how badly you want minimal action skill downtime. I usually just stick to the Triple Bypass almost always with the War Paint coming out for speed kills on bosses, as otherwise it does tend to be a bit overkill.

Bossing

Bossing can vary heavily depending on the method you're going with. The only general advice is to still try to aim for crits at least a little so as to more consistently get your Kill Skill stacks. If you're using the crit knife, disregard.

Complex Root - Element match, shoot through the largest part of the enemy or most overlapping hitboxes. For example, when Radix crouches down you can shoot through his face to hit almost his entire body with the additional Root projectiles. This means more hits, more potential auto crits, more damage.

Kaoson - Just spam shots into your target while spamming your skill button to throw Eldritch Blasts constantly and perpetually refill your magazine. You really don't need to dump that many stickies into a boss to kill. Play around and eventually you'll get a feel for it.
Note: Bullet Train applies while stickies are popping. After you stack your stickies and reload to pop them, start running around as fast as possible for the most damage.

T.K's Wave - Once again, getting an Atlas tracker on this can be a pain, but it's an absolute gamechanger. It makes it a much more consistent option. Track the boss, start running, shooting, and spam reloading. As in, literally spam the reload button while firing to reload and fire faster. Great option for bosses with annoying movement patterns.