Borderlands 4: Master Vex with These 3 Game‑Changing Builds — Phase Familiar, Elemental Spectre & Blood Shot

Vex is Borderlands 4’s Siren, and she offers three clear playstyles that suit different players. Below, you’ll find concise, factual builds that show what each tree focuses on, which gear helps, and where to watch the original breakdowns if you want to see them in action.

1. Vex’s skill trees and playstyles, explained
2. Phase Familiar build
3. Elemental Spectre build
4. Blood Shot build

Vex’s skill trees and playstyles, explained

Vex has three distinct skill trees that shape how you play. The red tree centers on a phase familiar called Trouble and leans toward survivability. The blue tree focuses on summoning spectral copies of Vex to apply status effects. Meanwhile, the green tree grants an Incarnate form that turns Vex into a high-damage, self-sufficient fighter. Each tree changes your role: tanky support, status spam, or all-in DPS.

For examples and demonstrations, creators have put together full playthroughs and build breakdowns. Below are the channel links where those videos and related guides live.

https://www.youtube.com/@ZennyHunter

https://www.youtube.com/@RageGamingVideos

https://www.youtube.com/@NickTew

Phase Familiar build

This build uses the red tree to keep Vex durable while boosting her gun damage through overshield-based passives. Key pieces are passives that increase regen and damage when you have overshield—think Overheal and Corporal. In addition, Shocking Attunement grants gun damage and movement speed when you hold a shock weapon, so electric guns pair well with this setup.

Although Trouble is summoned, this is not a pure pet build. Instead, you occasionally command Trouble to trigger the Yowl and Bay passive so Vex gets gun damage buffs. Overall, playstyle here is to maintain overshield and use shock weapons to maximize the consistent damage boost.

For a full, practical runthrough and talent choices, check the original video:

Elemental Spectre build

The blue tree build focuses on status effects and damage-over-time stacking. You and your summoned spectres both apply elemental damage, so carrying multiple-element guns matters. In particular, the build uses passives like Portents of Suffering to increase DoT damage, and Prismatic Ichor to add random elemental effects when one is applied.

Moreover, Keen Suffering lets DoT damage crit, which makes stacks much more lethal over time. Because the approach depends on applying many different status types, you need to swap elements to match enemy defenses and keep the spectres firing the right ammo.

RageGaming covers the full mechanic interactions and situational choices in their video:

Blood Shot build

The Blood Shot build is in the green tree and is more gear-dependent than the others. Its goal is to trigger the Blood Shot passive, which converts damage to Kinetic and scales with current health. Normally Blood Shot triggers with a repkit, but this build stacks tools to make the effect occur on normal shots.

Essential gear includes the Undead Eye legendary class mod. When used with a sniper, killing an enemy can proc Blood Shot, and the mod can also proc on crits. To make that happen reliably with other weapon types, you use an affixed Bod shotgun (for example, an Aramid Bod or Ballistic Bod). The Bod’s All-Arounder affix makes that shotgun count as every weapon type, so each shot can trigger the Undead Eye effects.

For precise weapon combos, stat thresholds, and play tips, watch NickTew’s breakdown:

Final notes

All three builds are viable. To summarize: the red tree is tanky and overshield-focused, the blue tree is status/DoT and clone-focused, and the green tree is gear- and timing-dependent for high single-target damage. Also, bear in mind that patches may change exact numbers, so revisit these guides or the videos above after major updates.