The Borderlands games have always been praised for their special Vault Hunter powers and creative skill systems.
With Borderlands 4 coming out, fans are excited to see how the new Vault Hunters compare to the classic characters from earlier games. Right now, everyone’s talking about Harlowe, a new Vault Hunter who brings cool new abilities and fresh ways to play.
The big question fans want answered is: Can Harlowe match up to — or even beat — Amara, the popular character from Borderlands 3, when it comes to taking down groups of enemies, different ways to play, and being the best overall character?
In this article, we’ll break down Harlowe’s skill trees, special abilities, and what makes her unique.
We’ll also look at whether she can knock Amara off her throne as the best character for fighting crowds of enemies in Borderlands history –
Harlowe’s Core Trait: Entanglement
Before looking at Harlowe’s builds, you need to understand her special Vault Hunter ability called Entanglement. This power is the foundation of how she plays.
- What is Entanglement? When Harlowe uses her action skill on enemies, those enemies become “entangled,” which means they share some of the gun damage and skill damage with each other. It basically turns any group of enemies into a connected network where hurting one enemy also hurts the others, letting her deal massive damage to multiple targets at once.
Entanglement Highlights:
- Shared Damage – Normally, entangled enemies share 7% of damage with each other, but her skill tree can boost that up to 32%.
- Synergies – Weapons like Jakob’s guns (which focus on critical hits) work really well with this ability, especially since critical hits can bounce damage around, making it even stronger.
- Mobbing Potential – Harlowe excels when fighting large groups of enemies because of Entanglement, making her amazing in crowd situations — similar to players who enjoyed Amara’s crowd-control focused builds.”
Harlowe’s Action Skills: Variety and Flexibility
Harlowe has several action skills that give players lots of choices. Each one offers a different way to play, giving you various ways to take down enemies.
1. Flux Generator
- What it does: Sets up a field that deals ice damage over time and entangles nearby enemies. Team members standing in the field get extra shields.
- When to use it: For controlling crowds. It slows enemies with ice damage, keeps dealing area damage, and lets Harlowe spread damage across groups of enemies through Entanglement. This skill is great for clearing entire areas.
- Notable Perk: Pressing the action button lets Harlowe pick up the generator and throw it at other groups. You get high movement plus powerful area damage.
2. Zero Point
- What it does: Works like a “freeze field,” similar to Phase Lock from Maya (Borderlands 2) but with a twist. Zero Point traps an enemy in a bubble, and players can “slam” that enemy into other enemies for area damage.
How it works with Entanglement: Using Zero Point lets Harlowe juggle enemies, slamming them over and over across groups to keep crowds under control while applying Entanglement smoothly.
Why it’s useful: Like Amara’s Phasegrasp, this skill works great against both single enemies and groups.
3. Chroma Accelerator
- What it does: Shoots a slow-moving blast that damages all enemies it goes through. Harlowe can explode the blast, causing a huge radiation area explosion.
- Synergy: Exploding large groups of entangled enemies creates incredible damage, making this skill perfect for taking down bosses.
- Upgrades: The Gravity upgrade turns it into a “black hole bomb,” pulling enemies into its path before exploding.
How Do These Compare to Amara?
Amara’s Phasegrasp and Phaseflare are powerful tools for controlling crowds and targeting single enemies, but Harlowe brings team benefits (extra shields) and more flexibility in how she uses her skills.
This makes her especially good for playing with others while still being dominant when fighting groups of enemies alone.
Skill Tree Breakdown: Building Harlowe
Harlowe’s skill trees focus on ice damage, radiation explosions, and crowd-control abilities. Each tree offers different paths to try, focusing on either fighting groups, helping teammates, or getting critical hits for explosive results.
1. Blue Tree: Stasis and Critical Hit Synergy
Harlowe’s blue tree works well with Jakob weapons, critical hits, and freeze abilities. This tree rewards players who aim carefully while making Entanglement’s damage-sharing even stronger.
Key Skills:
- Strange Attractor: Makes shots bounce off enemies when they’re frozen. Using this with critical hits can keep spreading Entanglement damage forever.
- Make Extraordinary: Building up critical hit chance makes Entanglement work more often, making crowd fighting feel smooth.
- Periodic Table Flip: Increases elemental damage and ice effectiveness. This tree relies heavily on ice and radiation working together.The blue tree is similar to Amara’s Mystical Assault tree, focusing on building up damage while creating smooth “chain reaction” gameplay through Entanglement.
2. Green Tree: AoE and Team Play
The green tree makes Flux Generator better while adding tools for extra shields and team support. Harlowe’s gameplay becomes much more team-focused, making her a great choice for group fights.
Key Skills:
- Blue Giant: Makes Flux Generator cover a bigger area, creating huge area damage.
- Action at a Distance: Harlowe spreads status effects across entangled enemies, constantly freezing and irradiating whole groups.
- Group Study: Flux Generator throws copies of grenades, working well with gear that combines high splash damage with area chaos.
This tree offers team-focused help, very different from Amara, who mostly offered raw elemental damage.
3. Red Tree: The Nuke Build
The red tree makes Harlowe’s Chroma Accelerator skill stronger, turning her into a destructive source of area and single-target burst damage.
Key Skills:
- Mechanical Brilliance: Increases skill damage for every enemy Chroma Accelerator damages.
- Void Star: Turns traveling shots into freezing, high-impact bursts that spread damage across enemies.
- Highly Efficient: Builds up shield restoration and cooldown refreshes, keeping her action skills running almost non-stop.
This red tree focuses on high burst damage with skill-boosting potential, easily matching Amara’s Elemental Orb builds.
Weapon Choice: Synergies with Harlowe
Harlowe works best with certain weapon types that make her Entanglement ability stronger:
1. Jakob’s Weapons
Jakob’s weapons naturally focus on critical hits, which work great with Entanglement’s damage-sharing and bouncing abilities.
Skills like Strange Attractor make bouncing shots even better, making Jakob’s guns perfect for taking down multiple targets.
2. Maliwan Weapons with Jakob’s Parts
Maliwan is great at causing status effects, and with elemental bonuses building up damage, Harlowe can tear through enemies.
Combining Maliwan’s ice effects with Jakob’s critical hit boost can make Entanglement much stronger.
3. Splash Damage Grenades
Entanglement-friendly builds work well with grenades that deal splash damage, especially with skills like Blue Giant and Creative Overflow.
How Does Harlowe Compare to Amara?
1. Mobbing Potential
Both Harlowe and Amara are amazing at fighting groups of enemies, but Harlowe’s Entanglement ability makes her slightly better at clearing waves of enemies.
Her damage isn’t limited by distance and spreads across all entangled enemies, letting her handle huge crowds efficiently.
Amara’s Phasegrasp builds, while great for chaining groups together, don’t have the damage-sharing feature that Harlowe offers.
The damage teamwork with ice and radiation effects on Harlowe also feels better suited for creative chain-reaction setups.
2. Skill Tree Diversity
Amara’s skill trees were fantastic, offering flexibility across different roles like fighting groups (Mystical Assault), elemental damage over time (Fist of the Elements), and close combat tank (Brawl).
Harlowe matches this versatility but adds unique team-play features (extra shields, reviving teammates) not seen in Amara’s abilities.
This gives Harlowe the potential to be a better Vault Hunter for team-focused players.
3. Boss-Worthy Damage
One important area where Harlowe doesn’t seem to match Amara is in boss-killing potential.
While Amara could use the Elemental Orb to build up massive single-target damage, Harlowe lacks a true “boss destroyer.”
Her skills are fantastic against groups, but without specific abilities focusing on raw damage transfer, Harlowe might fall short against high-health, single-enemy targets.
Conclusion: Does Harlowe Rival Amara?
Harlowe brings a fresh and exciting playstyle to Borderlands 4 with her Entanglement-focused design.
Her teamwork with ice, radiation, and area skills makes her the ultimate crowd-control Vault Hunter, potentially beating Amara in group-fighting situations.
However, for boss-killing or brute-force elemental power, Harlowe may not quite match Amara’s versatility.
It ultimately depends on how you like to play: Harlowe is perfect for players who love area damage, status effect building, and multiplayer teamwork.
In the hands of creative players, Harlowe can absolutely match Amara — and might even beat her as the best Borderlands Vault Hunter for destroying groups of enemies.
What do you think about Harlowe’s potential? Can she beat Amara? Let us know in the comments!
