If you're new to Borderlands or if you haven't tried all the classes yet, you may be wondering... "Which class is best for me?" Well you've come to the right place! I will be doing a guide for each of the playable classes in the first Borderlands game (and eventually the other games). I will include their playstyle, their potential, and some tips for playing as them! Here we go!

Mordecai - The Hunter
Action Skill - Bloodwing
Playstyle - Sniper/Melee

Mordecai's playstyle is built around getting critical hits. His skill trees are Gunslinger (pistols/melee), Rogue (Bloodwing), and Sniper (self-explanatory). For his action skill, Mordecai throws out his pet hawk named Bloodwing. Bloodwing will swoop down once on a single enemy, dealing large damage. At first sight, this may seem like the most useless action skill in the game. But through the Rogue skill tree, you can massively upgrade Bloodwing. A fully-leveled player can make Bloodwing's damage doubled and have her attack 6 times, restoring your health and lowering enemy accuracy each time she hits.

Mordecai's Sniper skill tree is obviously about sniping, but not completely. Some abilities include bonus sniper rifle damage, gaining extra experience with critical hits, and increasing accuracy. However, the capstone (ultimate ability) of this tree gives you a 20% chance to completely bypass enemy shields. This can be upgraded to a 100% chance. While not all enemies have shields early on, by the time you can get this ability most of the tougher enemies have shields... Shields that don't help them at all! There is also an ability called Carrion Call that can be maxed to make it so any time you hit with a sniper rifle, 4 seconds of Bloodwing's cooldown is reduced. This can be combined with the Rogue skill tree for some massive bird damage!

Finally, Mordecai's Gunslinger skill tree is quite varied. It is my personal favorite to use. Some abilities include shooting two bullets with one press, getting massive health regeneration, and increasing fire rate. The capstone allows you to gain a large amount of extra damage and fire rate after you kill an enemy. My favorite part of this tree, however, has to be the Lethal Strike ability. It increases your melee damage by 10% per rank, but also adds a 35% chance for your melee attacks to deal +100% damage. Maxed out, you get +50% base melee, and a chance to deal massive 500% melee damage. Through a class mod, you could be doing +1000% and killing even bosses in a single strike. The only problem with the Gunslinger tree, however, is that it doesn't synergize very well with the other skill trees, like how Carrion Call can work perfectly with the Rogue tree.

I would recommend Mordecai for anyone who enjoys long-ranged, defensive combat, but can still hold up in close-range combat via pistols and melee attacks. He works perfectly with pistols and snipers, and is especially good if you have bladed melee guns.

Roland - The Soldier
Action Skill - Scorpio Turret
Playstyle - Support/Close Combat

Roland is the ultimate co-op character, but he can still hold on his own. Sorta. His turret can be deployed to fire bursts at enemies, while also creating a shield for cover. His skill trees are Medic (health regeneration), Support (ammo, shield recharge, and turret cooldown), and Infantry (turret and Roland damage). Let's just get this out of the way: Support is completely inferior to the other skill trees. I do not recommend it unless you want to go for a different, less effective playstyle.

Roland's Medic tree is essential for any co-op campaigns. It increases your maximum health and damage resistance, but also allows you to heal teammates by shooting them, reviving buddies instantly by deploying your turret, and making your turret have a field of health and ammo regeneration. The capstone allows you and any teammates to gain good health regeneration whenever you kill an enemy. This can work fine solo, but I would recommend Infantry if you're playing alone.

Speaking of Infantry, the Infantry skill tree is all about straight up damage. You can increase turret damage, bullet damage, and increased combat rifle magazine size. This tree is alright, but the main draw is the capstone. The capstone allows your turret to periodically shoot out guided missiles, dealing massive damage and stunning enemies. This stunning can be great for large, tanking enemies.

I would recommend Roland if you... uh... nah, I can't do it. Roland sucks. He's amazing for co-op if your partner needs healing a lot, but it's still pretty boring.

Lilith - The Siren
Action Skill - Phasewalk
Playstyle - Elemental/Fire Rate

Lilith, being a Siren, is all about SMGs and damage over time. She's not too great with explosive elemental, and corrosive is rather mediocre in the first Borderlands, so I would recommend trying to find shock or fire guns for Lilith. Her action skill, Phasewalk, allows her to become invisible for a short time and explode when the skill ends. While Phasewalking, Lilith moves twice as fast and can damage enemies around her. Her skill trees are Assassin (Phasewalking), Elemental (self-explanatory), and Controller (shields and weakening enemies). Her Controller skill tree is mainly about Dazing enemies. Through many of her skills in that tree, Lilith can have a chance to reduce enemy movement speed and accuracy when she attacks. This is situationally useful, but I find the other trees to be funner and more effective.

Her Elemental tree can be extremely powerful with the right gear. You can increase fire rate, elemental effect chance/resistance, and deal constant shock damage to enemies while Phasewalking. What's more, her capstone allows Lilith to constantly deal fire damage to enemies around her. Maxed out, you can literally kill almost any normal enemy just by walking past them. A tip for any advanced players: The Hellfire SMG with Lilith's maxed out elemental effect chance and damage, is incredible. The Hellfire's special ability allows its fire damage over time to stack, allowing you to rapidly ignite enemies, dealing absolutely mindblowing damage. 

Finally, her Assassin tree is all about Phasewalking and melee damage. Its skills can massively decrease the cooldown of Phasewalk, and also largely increase melee damage. The capstone, however, is possibly the greatest ability in the game if combined with other skills. When Phasewalk ends, you deal a bonus +160% damage. That's 800% maxed out. Lilith is arguably the best character in the game, because if done right using class mods, she can literally always be in Phasewalk. By time she's done Phasewalking, the cooldown will be reset. That means massive melee damage every couple seconds, plus permanent invincibility.

I would recommend Lilith for anyone. She's extremely easy to use, and makes you feel great. For the first couple levels she's quite mediocre, but she has the potential to be the best character in the game. Her only flaw, in my opinion, is that she doesn't really have a lot of defensive skills to keep her from dying, but then again her Phasewalk makes her invincible.

Brick - The Berserker
Action Skill - Berserk
Playstyle - Melee/Explosions/Tanking

Brick is fun. He's dang fun. You can just run up to the strongest enemies, punch them to death, and still have half your health left. His action skill causes Brick to drop his guns and bring out his fists. While Berserking, you gain rapid health regeneration and increased melee damage. Right trigger/click is a super quick punch, left trigger/click is a slow but immensely powerful uppercut. His skill trees are Blaster (explosives), Tank (invincibility), and Brawler (melee). I haven't used Blaster very much, but it seems to be centered around rocket launchers and fire rate.

Brick's Tank tree is incredible. Right off the bat, the first abilities, are +12% health per rank and +8% shield life per rank. That may not seem like much, but in Borderlands that's pretty huge. Next level of the tree, Juggernaut makes it so when you kill an enemy you gain +12% damage reduction per rank for a few seconds (the ingame description explains it incorrectly). Oh, alright, so at this point you can already basically never die. Next level of the tree, when your shields become depleted, all damage is boosted by 8% per rank. This lasts 10 whole seconds. 10 seconds is a lot considering shield recharge delay is on average about 3 seconds. Maxed out and with a class mod, that's 72% bonus damage. But wait, aren't you never going to have your shields depleted anyways? Here's the solution: Shoot yourself with a rocket launcher. The capstone of the Tank tree is the opposite of that ability. When your shields are depleted, you get 5 seconds of massive shield recharge at 3% per second per rank. So basically, your health can never go down.

Sorry, I got a little excited. The Brawler tree is all about Berserking forever and dealing extra melee damage. Pretty basic tree, not much to say about it. You can halve the cooldown and add 50% to the duration of Berserking, so that's pretty fun.

I would recommend Brick for anyone who likes RUNNING UP TO THINGS AND PUNCHING THE S**T OUT OF THEM AND BLOWING TONS OF S**T UP WITH LAUNCHERS AND BASICALLY NEVER DYING! He's not that overpowered, though. He's just super fun. His damage doesn't quite scale very good at higher levels, but he still basically can't die. I would also recommend you use shotguns with him, since shotguns require getting close up to enemies and Brick can do that without fear of dying.

Recap:

The Hunter is mostly about sniping and his action skill. He's not super amazing in the leveling stage, but he can be great once you hit a capstone. I recommend him for anyone that likes sniping in shooters and can aim well.

The Soldier is a support class. His turret is good for fending off enemies, and he can quickly heal teammates that are damaged in battle. I recommend him if you get joy from helping others and are more defensive than offensive. He's well-rounded, but he doesn't really have any skills that have "oomph," you could say.

The Siren is all about elements (not explosive) and SMGs with high fire rate. Elemental SMGs with high fire rate are even better. Her ability literally makes her invincible for a short time. She's quite a glass cannon, so she may die a lot but her elemental damage is truly supreme. I recommend her for anyone that likes spraying flaming bullets everywhere and more fast-paced gameplay.

The Berserker is the tankiest class in the game. He even has a skill tree called Tank. He's pretty great right off the bat, so you won't have to wait until you get to a high level before you're good. I recommend him for anyone that likes running up to enemies and punching them. He's fun, but don't get too carried away with his defense.



Thanks for reading my guide, I hope I have given you some help in which classes to choose! I have to say, this game is more balanced than I might imply. Every character can hold their own quite well, but some a bit more than others. Good luck and happy vault hunting!

I always go with the snipers. Borderlands one I was Mordecai. 2 I bought Gaige so I played as her and Zero. Then in the Pre-Sequel I am playing as the overpowered Nisha. Mordecai was so good in the original Borderlands if you had an Eridian Sniper Rifle. Good guide by the way. If I ever play the original again I will probably look at this beforehand.

TheFadedWarrior : I've decided to go back and look into guides people make I should really do. Anyways. I know I don't play borderlands so I can't say much to that. But I see the way you layed out your guide its really helpful and of course using the right colours to highlight the important aspect part of your guide for people to see. So that they know what's what.