All Borderlands 4 characters: Which Vault Hunter should you pick?

Borderlands 4‘s Vault Hunters are some of the most unique the series has seen so far, only helped by the fact that each one has three fully-fledged skill trees packed with perks, augments, and capstones that change how your three action skills function. There’s a lot to consider, so deciding which Vault Hunter to pick, or the best characters, is quite the conundrum.

To help you make that all-important decision, I’ll give you an overview of each Vault Hunter and their three broad playstyles. However, I’d be foolish not to note that the ‘meta’ doesn’t really matter in Borderlands, so pick whichever character you think looks the coolest. Plus, Borderlands 4 finally lets you skip the campaign on alternate characters, so it’s easier than ever to try out all the Vault Hunters.

Who’s the best character in Borderlands 4?

If I had to pick just one, the best character in Borderlands 4 is Rafa, primarily due to his incredible ability to buff his gun damage across both his Remote Agent and People Person skill trees. In fact, if you’re willing to forgo having a capstone perk, you could evenly split your perks down both trees for absurd damage multipliers. It’s perhaps not the most engaging build, but it’s undeniably powerful in all situations.

Harlowe is another great pick, whether you’re playing solo or with friends. Harlowe brings together everything you theoretically need from a single character, being able to dish out high burst damage with her Creative Bursts tree, massive mobbing potential through her Seize the Day tree, and even a more supportive playstyle with Cosmic Brilliance. If you like the Sirens from previous games, then Harlowe’s the Vault Hunter for you.

All Borderlands 4 Vault Hunters

There are currently four Vault Hunters in Borderlands 4: Vex, Harlowe, Rafa, and Amon, though two more characters are confirmed to arrive in future DLC—the Vault Hunter Pack that’s included with the Super Deluxe edition or that you can buy separately.

Harlowe: The Gravitar

Former Maliwan combat scientist, Harlowe, feels much more like the Sirens from previous games, especially with her Seize the Day skill tree (basically Amara’s popular Ties That Bind build taken even further), though she brings a lot more than that to the table. Of all the Vault Hunters, I’d say Harlowe also has the most team-focused skill tree in Cosmic Brilliance, too, so she’s perfect if you’re playing with friends.

• Harlowe’s trait is Entanglement: Whenever Harlowe uses her action skill on enemies, they become entangled, causing them to share a portion of gun and skill damage to other entangled enemies.

Here’s an overview of Harlowe’s three skill trees and their associated action skill:

• Creative Bursts: Blast enemies with a raging ball of radiation or ice, controlling the battlefield by making sure there’s nothing left standing. While most of this tree centres around the Chroma Accelerator action skill, you’ll still be using your guns plenty.
  • Chroma Accelerator: Fire an unstable energy pocket from Harlowe’s Chroma Accelerator, which passes through enemies and deals cryo damage to all nearby enemies. Reactivating this skill causes the energy pocket to explode, dealing heavy radiation damage in a large area.
• Seize the Day: Like Sirens of old, place an enemy in a bubble. Through this tree, you’ll be able to grab multiple enemies and share massive amounts of damage between them. There’s a lot of focus on cryo or radiation damage and ricochets throughout this tree. Just like previous versions of the phase grasp skill, large enemies like bosses can’t be bubbled (though they’ll still take damage and become entangled), so it loses its effectiveness in certain situations.
  • Zero-Point: Place an enemy in stasis for a duration. Enemies immune to stasis (like bosses) take damage instead. Reactivating this skill causes the enemy in stasis to be slammed into the ground in the direction you’re facing, creating a small explosion.
• Creative Brilliance: Chuck down a mobile energy field that damages enemies and buffs your team, with a focus on overshields and ice and/or radiation damage. It’s great for support play and mobbing, though it won’t always work all too well against bosses.
  • Flux Generator: Throw a Flux Generator on the ground, which projects an energy field, dealing cryo damage over time and entangling enemies. Allies inside the energy field gain overshield. Reactivate this skill to replace the Flux Generator.

Vex: The Siren

Gaining her powers after surviving a bad day as a retail worker on Borderlands’ equivalent of Black Friday, Mercenary Day, Vex is Borderlands 4’s Siren, though she’s quite different to the Sirens we’ve seen in the past.

• Vex’s trait is Phase Covenant: Vex is attuned to the elemental type of her current gun, converting all action skill and melee damage into that type.

Here’s an overview of Vex’s three skill trees and their associated action skill:

• Vexcalation: Master Kill Skills (even without killing enemies) and fire spectral blasts using the Incarnate action skill to focus solely on increasing Vex’s power. There’s a good balance between action skill usage and guns, though you won’t be using any minions in this build.
  • Incarnate: Vex creates a phase explosion, dealing damage to nearby enemies and fully restoring her health. While this action skill is active, you’ll gain movement speed and can cast Eldrich Blast, dealing damage to nearby enemies on impact. Dealing gun damage reduces the cooldown of Eldrich Blast.
• The Fourth Seal: This skill tree focuses on Vex’s reaper and spectre minions using the Dead Ringer action skill, similar to Zane’s Double Agent tree from Borderlands 3. The idea is to make the most powerful summons for extra firepower, while also using them to further boost Vex’s own offensive and defensive capabilities.
  • Dead Ringer: Spawn a phase clone minion, either a spectre or a reaper. Phase clones lose an ever-increasing amount of health per second, and their damage type matches your current attunement. Reapers taunt enemies and deal melee damage, while spectres deal gun damage but cannot move.
• Here Comes Trouble: Use Phase Phamiliar to summon your best bud Trouble to wreck face together, similar to FL4K’s Beastmaster playstyle in Borderlands 3. With a focus on elemental damage and survivability, this tree is perfect if you’re looking for a more laid-back approach.
  • Phase Phamiliar: Vex is joined by her minion, Trouble. When killed, Trouble will respawn after a cooldown. You can manually teleport Trouble, causing him to deal damage in an area and transform into a badass, fully restoring his health and increasing his damage for a duration.

Rafa: The Exo-Soldier

Being forever on the run from Tediore is very on-brand for this AWOL exo-soldier, who blitzes across the battlefield at 100mph. Using a variety of high-tech weapons across his skill trees, Rafa feels like a combination of Moze and Krieg from Borderlands 3 and 2, respectively.

• Rafa’s trait is Overdrive: Whenever Rafa activates an action skill, he enters Overdrive, gaining increased movement speed and damage from all sources. Overdrive’s duration doesn’t decrease while an action skill is active.

Here’s an overview of Rafa’s three skill trees and their associated action skill:

• Remote Agent: Guns. This skill tree is all about guns. Critical hits, indirect projectiles (like ricochets, Tediore reloads, and action skill weapons), rate of fire boosts, you name it. Keeping things old school, there are only limited elemental effects in this tree. Thanks to the hands-off approach of Peacebreaker Cannon and this tree’s bonuses to Overdrive, especially later on in the tree, all you need to focus on is shooting.
  • Peacebreaker Cannons: Equip Peacebreaker Cannons, which automatically fire at enemies near your crosshair, dealing kinetic gun damage.
• People Person: While this tree is also all about guns, it has a very different approach. There are options to effectively have infinite ammo, and much more of an emphasis on elemental effects. The key here is the cooldown reduction perks, which let you nuke enemies with Apophis Lance.
  • Apophis Lance: Equip the Apophis Lance in your offhand, decreasing your gun handling, but letting you fire piercing shock ordnance blasts. You can hold down the trigger to consume all your charges into one, much more powerful blast.
• This Year’s Gimmick: Unsurprisingly, this skill tree is almost entirely focused on melee damage, using lifesteal and shield regeneration to stay on your feet when you’re jumping headfirst into the chaos. However, you can specialise in ordnance damage or elemental damage later in the tree. It’s possible to make a build where you’re permanently using Arc-Knives, which will appeal to those who’d rather slash than shoot.
  • Arc-Knives: Equip Arc-Knives to deal melee damage and mark enemies on hit, causing them to take increased damage for every mark. By default, you can perform a dash attack that deals shock melee damage, and you can end the skill early using Blade Fury, dealing bonus shock damage to all marked enemies.

Amon: The Forgeknight

Built like a Viking, Amon is the biggest playable character in any Borderlands game yet, towering over almost everything, and he carries this imposing nature into his skill trees. As a Forgeknight, Amon creates a variety of elemental weapons, from hammers, axes, and swords, to shields and even drones. He’s a highly customisable tank (similar to Moze from Borderlands 3) who loves to get up in the enemies’ face before pulverising them.

• Amon’s trait is Forgeskill: Amon gains a unique Forgeskill ability depending on his equipped action skill. These are activated by holding the action skill button, and are given additional properties with certain skills, augments, and capstones.
  • Molten Slam (Onslaughter action skill): Slam a molten forgehammer into the ground, dealing incendiary melee damage to enemies in a large area.
  • Firewall (Scourge action skill): Deploy a shield that absorbs enemy projectiles while granting friendly projectiles increased damage and velocity. Absorbed damage is converted into Vengeance stacks if Scourge is active. Enemies near the Firewall take incendiary status effect damage over time.
  • Double-Edge (Crucible action skill): Throw a twinned forgeaxe, dealing cryo melee damage to enemies it passes through and returning to Amon, dealing incendiary melee damage on the way back.

Here’s an overview of Amon’s three skill trees and their associated action skill:

• Calamity: This tree has one goal in mind, and that’s to become the iconic Doom Slayer. Run around with faster movement speed and rocket-punch enemies into dust. Obviously, there’s a big focus on melee damage and action skill use in this tree, though there’s also a lot of potential for hybrid builds using close-range weapons.
  • Onslaughter: Overloads Amon’s Forgefist, gaining constant shield regeneration, bonus incendiary damage with guns, and increased movement speed.
• Vengeance: Amon’s tanky, brawler playstyle couldn’t be more apparent than here, using both a shield and damage-boosting barrier to stay kicking and dish out the pain. This tree plays very well into ordnance-based builds, using heavy weapons for massive damage that’ll be strong against trashmobs and bosses alike. There’s also an emphasis on incendiary and cryo damage throughout this tree.
  • Scourge: Equip a Forgeshield that absorbs all frontal damage to generate Vengeance. Whenever the Vengeance meter is filled, Forgeshield provides damage reduction instead. Reactivate the skill to launch a Forgewave, dealing cryo ordnance damage and consuming Vengeance for bonus damage.
• Cybernetics: Fully taking advantage of Amon’s arsenal of Forge weapons, this tree is all about spamming action skills to deal heavy damage and control the battlefield. You can swap between different elemental Forge weapons, spawn Forgedrones for extra support, and use Forgeskills to detonate enemies for even more damage. While it’s generally a tree designed for action skill builds, there are opportunities for more gun-based setups, too, though it’s more limited than his other trees.
  • Crucible: Throw either a flame or frost axe, dealing incendiary or cryo damage, respectively. Enemies damaged by Forgeaxes are primed for a duration, and will detonate when they die or are damaged by a Forgeskill, dealing damage to nearby enemies.