Which Vault Hunter should you choose?

Choosing your Vault Hunter at the beginning of Borderlands 4 will affect your entire experience in the game. Each of the Vault Hunters has different skills, abilities, and elemental affinities that have varying strengths and weaknesses. Which one you choose is largely down to personal preference, although the Siren, Vex, has all elemental affinities making her a strong choice if you’re new to the franchise.

Unlike Borderlands 3, where Moze was an obvious choice for the best Vault Hunter, all of the Borderlands 4 offerings are viable. Each one is built for synergy, making their attack patterns satisfying and effective, though they are suited to different playstyles. Below, we’ll go through all of the Vault Hunters and their strengths so you can make a fully-informed choice before diving in.

Vex¶

My personal favourite, and who I’m playing through the game as, Vex is a Siren with interesting abilities. She’s a summoner with customisable elemental affinities, meaning she can take on a huge range of opponents with relative ease. She has a permanent set of pets and minions, and can change elemental damage mid-fight. She’s fantastic for crowd control and those who want to get creative with their buildcrafting.

Action Skills

• Dead Ringer: Summons up to three melee Reapers or turret Specters
• Phase Phamiliar: Summons Trouble, a beast that can teleport and cause area of effect damage
• Incarnate: Creates an explosion, damaging enemies and buffing Vex’s damage

Trait

• Phase Covenant: Vex’s minions take on the elemental type of her currently-equipped weapon

Rafa¶

Rafa is an exo-soldier. He’s fast and agile, but his digistruct abilities allow him to craft weapons and gear on the go. For that reason, he’s incredibly versatile and a strong choice if you like fast gameplay with a dash of creativity.

Action Skills

• Apophis Lance: Deploys an arm cannon that fires piercing rounds
• Peacebreaker Cannons: Auto-aiming shoulder turrets
• Arc-Knives: Dual blades deployed and used for rapid melee attacks

Trait

• Overdrive: Boosts movement speed and damage during the use of Action Skills

Harlowe¶

Harlowe is known as a Gravitar, and uses telekinesis to control crowds of enemies. She plays similarly to a Siren, but with added physics. She can control space itself, and spreads damage across groups of opponents as well as controlling their positioning.

Action Skills

• Zero-Point: Lifts enemies into the air before slamming them into the ground or other foes
• Chroma Accelerator: Fires a blast of energy which uses her Entanglement trait to deal damage to all enemies in the area
• Flux Generator: Drops a pulse mine which uses her Entanglement ability to deal damage to all enemies in the area

Trait

• Entanglement: Damage dealt to one Entangled enemy spreads to all others in the surrounding area, creating a large area of effect.

Amon¶

Amon is a Forgeknight, and plays like a huge tank. He’s a giant of a man, with lots of armor and massive weaponry meaning he can often use brute force as a viable tactic. This comes at the cost of speed, so if you’re a fan of rapid battles maybe consider a different Vault Hunter.

Action Skills

• Crucible: Throws axes made of fire or ice. His secondary skill here is that he can combine the elements and throw both at the same time
• Onslaughter: A melee attack dowsed in fire. His secondary skill is a hammer slam which creates a fire AoE
• Scourge: Summons a shield which can absorb damage while hitting with a whip. His secondary skill creates a fire wall which damages enemies that touch it while blocking their incoming attacks

Trait

• Dual Casting: Each of Amon’s action skills have a secondary skill which allows him to create attack combinations.