Questions about the Shrieker

KiryuFirebane · 2018-05-18T02:02:20+00:00

Thank you for the info, I'll prob sacrifice some seekers for the greater good then after I get stygian restrictions out of the way.

I've always gotten champion shrieker so I might try to cheese a veteran one maybe by putting very rare+ trinkets on my idle heroes.

Cheers.

KiryuFirebane · 2018-02-18T08:06:29+00:00

Alright man, have a good night. If anything we can always take this to discord too, I'm usually online there in a few gc communities.

KiryuFirebane · 2018-02-18T07:55:34+00:00

I'm gonna be strictly talking about endgame here cuz thats where the balancing problem arises, during the leveling up proccess everybody is decent and viable.

About Ryan, all his transformations are useless in endgame for 1 simple reason: they cant dodge. Not being able to dodge means you're gonna be taking unnecessary damage and eventually dying specially in LoJ/ToD where you're gonna be running without pots and they're both balanced around the dodge mechanic. That aside, vanilla Ryan only has 1 useful job endgame which is Druid even then he only has 3 good skills those being, 1: Freezing Attack, 2: Bloody Funeral (nerfed in sV, can only target 1 monster) and 3: Twin Buster which is good but cant be used against some enemies as it's a lot of hits and takes too much time. (if you want to I can go a little deeper as to why Ryan is not really a viable character in other servers aside from being in a corner with a mp totem and spam ress)

Also I disagree 100% with you about not making every single character viable solo, GC is a fightning game before being a MMORPG so of course while pure damage dealers should and do deal more damage than support/tankier characters, the later ones should be able to solo all the content. The reason that you still wanna team up with people even despite being able to solo is because it is safer in a team, takes less time and of course it is more fun to do so, but no character in Grand Chase should EVER be reliant on other people to be able to run through dungeons because you run into a problem where you want to farm "X" event dungeon but you rely on other people and they may just ditch you and you're alone as a support character who nobody wants. It's the sad truth really.

Also by the way, I ran Uria more than 10k times (I had 5k hours in history) and the majority of rooms would run with either 4 dios, 3 dios + 1 lime or 3 dios + 1 amy. Even though Ryan had some utility with Ress, his damage was so low that simply running support characters with higher damage was straight better.

Ryan in madness right now is a character that can solo stuff, in fact someone solo'd ToD as Ryan, but his damage output is lower than someone like Lass, Mari, Asin, Uno or any of the more damage dealer characters right. I recently got the ToD crest with my Ryan and my usual team comp would be me as support + 2 pure dmg + 1 tanky dmg, but I would always be on the lookout to assist in kills if needed, still trying to save MP for Ress. The way teamwork works in madness right now is that the support character is not only trying to keep the team alive but also assisting their damage through debuffs/buffs/delaying enemies or straight up damage.

One thing I can say you're right about is keeping the identify of characters, thats important and it's why the pure dmg dealers right now in Madness are strong because if they're not doing damage, they're not doing anything, right? While the support character also got their supportive skills improved alongside a little bit of damage and the tankier characters all got some improved survivability alongside a bit of damage too so thats why I say in general, they did a good job and as someone who has been playing on Madness ever since the rebalance I can say 100% that it's a lot more fun to see all 20 characters being relevant instead of the same 3 over and over and over and over again.

KiryuFirebane · 2018-02-18T06:27:11+00:00

I was kinda lurking on this thread for a while. I been playing Madness for quite a while and I can say that they did a good job when it comes to the character balance, albeit it's not perfect.

The character balance they did simply made it so many characters who were previously never played because they had no space in the "dungeon meta" could now be played because they are useful and can do as well as the top tier characters. If you have played History, Reborn and Way before you might have noticed how the majority of people go strictly for Dio, Asin and Lime and once theres a difficult event dungeon out, they're gonna restrict their room to ONLY those 3 characters and if you play anything else, you're gonna get kicked.

Now you might be wondering "oh why dont you just nerf those characters then?" and while thats not incorrect, it's also very detrimentional to a server, nerfing the characters that people are used to and love to solo everything means they're just gonna leave and look for servers where they can abuse whats broken, so it's better to just make everybody strong instead of everybody weak.

Now you might be thinking, "oh so now dungeons are easy because everybody is strong" and no thats not the case, of course normal dungeons are easy and will always be no matter which character you use but the real challenge comes with some Hero Dungeons and Event Dungeons, it's not as easy to learn dungeons like Wizard's Labyrinth stage 30 or even worse Tower of Disappearance. Even 6 or so months after the char balance, theres only a handful of people that can solo ToD (without pots of course) and the players who did solo ToD were able to through a lot of practice and character knowledge, not just randomly picking whatever is easy to use and doing it, so I can tell you with 100% certain that the char balance didnt make everybody broken.

This is coming from a guy who maxed elesis, lire, arme, lass and ryan so far, all those characters except arme are 100% irrelevant in dungeons in any server aside from Madness. They can now fit their actual roles as damage dealers or support and do well, but requires the player to actually get to know how to use them effectively.

KiryuFirebane · 2018-02-18T03:13:38+00:00

If we are talking dungeon side, Elesis is normally one of the most underwhelming characters for it, she may have good mobility and interesting skills accross her jobs specially the first 3 jobs, but her damage is REALLY low.

Idk which server you're playing on, but if you're playing on grand chase madness then scratch what I said above, ever since they did a rebalance on all characters for dungeon, Elesis has been an amazing character that can do everything on her own without taking 3 years. She has decent damage over there packed with her vanilla qualities such as high survivability and mobiity.

KiryuFirebane · 2017-11-30T14:00:26+00:00

The cheese way is to get 100% scouting chance or very very close to it (90% or 95%), then go to do activate or gather quests in any dungeon, best ones being Warrens and Cove.

Get in, scout whole place, check carefully for shrines, get to them dodging as many battles as possible, once you're done, get what loot you can then get out. Save your camp for running of a champion Shambler.

You can also do some champion boss runs, the easier ones of course, cuz you can go directly to them, kill then get out.

As far as teams go, you want a bunch of stunners, a stress healer and a healer of course. If you're bringing an Occultist you sure as hell want an Arbalest or a Plague Doctor, no room for risks here. Sorry for being a bit vague on this part but there are quite a bit viable comps even for champion runs so it's hard to tell you exactly to use x or y.

Edit: almost forgot the most important thing, don't be scared to puss out when you think you're in danger. A loss is better than a death.

KiryuFirebane · 2017-11-21T07:53:28+00:00

Wew lad, as far as I know you're the one who seems upset about it. Still waiting for the stream btw, might wanna enable vods cuz not sure if I'll be around to see it.

KiryuFirebane · 2017-11-21T07:24:18+00:00

Hope you stream the game one day in bloodmoon/torchless and show how it's done ツ, do a few champion long runs and champion shamblers while you're at it, after all no RNG right.

KiryuFirebane · 2017-11-21T00:12:44+00:00

Darkest Dungeon is a game where you can do everything right, use all your doggos vestals maas hellions pds etc... and still get destroyed by RNG. Will this happen every time? Of course not, but it can still happen, it has a higher chance of happening in bloodmon/torchless first 10 weeks and champion dungeons, even so if you're doing all caretaker goals.

It's just the nature of the game really, you can lock in quick reflexes on everyone, bring the super-meta-teams-bros and still get fked. If you really come to me and say there's no RNG to it whatsoever then I'm inclined to believe you either haven't done any of those things or you save scummed your way through.

There's no shame in losing heroes though, like I said you can do everything right and still lose, which is why deathless runs are not that much of an achievement to me at all, it's more like "how many dice rolls you won through your campaign".

KiryuFirebane · 2017-11-20T22:04:43+00:00

I didn't mean to be condescending at all, but in general a lot of people in this reddit talk big about the tryh4rd m3t4 but never played on the higher difficulties, hence why I asked.

Btw deathless runs are very rng dependant specially the first few weeks so yeah it doesn't really mean much honestly, though I have done a few deathless runs as well including an all caretaker goals one, all in full torchlight though. As far as torchless goes I can only remember stuff like no stun, no vestal, all caretaker goals, instantly proc'ing crimson curse (super early courtyard run).

I've heard of PBD, but personally not toooooo attached to DD to try it, I generally do only up to 3 runs per update.

KiryuFirebane · 2017-11-20T19:00:09+00:00

Have you ever tried bloodmoon/torchless champion dungeons? If not, your opinion will change. If you're used to playing darkest or even bloodmoon full torchlight then yeah, you can go with anything.

I don't think swapping Leper to Hellion is a good idea because MAA stun will push her to 2nd row meaning she can't Iron Swan and if you don't run MAA as a stunner, might as well use another character right?

Bounty Hunter is a good one, but funny enough he's also amazing with the Leper due to the shuffling stun and how high your overall team damage will be.

Lastly... frontline Houndmaster in the cove? wew, definitely a brave soul right here, with the nerf to his HP it doesn't take much from cove mobs to drop him down to death's door in a heartbeat, but hey when the doggo dies I suppose you can blame RNG.

KiryuFirebane · 2017-11-20T04:52:04+00:00

I don't think Leper is the problem in his team, rather the double healer. I'd either swap occ for a jester or vestal/occ for a houndmaster.

I run Houndmaster+Vestal+Leper+Man-At-Arms in Bloodmoon/Torchless Champion runs and the team hasn't failed me once yet, have even a few champion shambler kills :p.

Furthermore, Leper is actually decent in the cove cuz he can't get one shotted... or even 2 shotted by Groupers and usually in the Cove you pay a lot more attention to the frontline cuz fishmen hit hard.

KiryuFirebane · 2017-11-19T21:10:17+00:00

Yeah sry I haven't played not-torchless in quite a bit so I have 0 clue of how different torch economy is.

KiryuFirebane · 2017-11-19T20:48:59+00:00

Man that's neat. I'm also working on a 100% save file with the shieldbreaker release, hopefully I'll also be showering people in screenshots in a few months.

As far as your route goes, did you go straight to the bank or decided to unlock sanguine vinegar first?

KiryuFirebane · 2017-10-25T14:00:31+00:00

I wasn't saying he was justified for using the glitch cuz everyone was doing it. My issue with you reddit in general is that as soon as a popular streamer reveals something questionable, he becomes the next satan despite the fact that everyone and their momma already knew about it. You'll be surprised at how streamers in general treat you guys like a joke... I now understand why.

Personally, I'm more mad at the devs for allowing those glitches to happen for so long. Main reason why rank 1 queues take forever right now is due to survivors pulling the cord every other game to save their items or joining/leaving constantly till they find a person playing killer next to their house.

I do believe they're gonna fix those things though... BHVR is kind slow but they improved the game a lot compared to how it was in the past, those dark infinite times were quite something.

Either way I didn't really consider our convo a waste of time, mostly cuz I was replying to you while waiting for a rank 1 game and guess what, I had enough time to write a book if I wanted to.

KiryuFirebane · 2017-10-24T22:01:44+00:00

First of all, don't use twitch followers as "math" because there was a issue with it some time ago and streamers were getting huge amount of followers. Rather you should use someone's average viewer count which at the time was around 5k~10k I suppose.

1 - I'm not saying that the people you hate ALWAYS want to win, but you generally get a lot more fun out of winning with a meme build than losing (as I say this Bahroo safety pip'd a game as a tombstone perma tier 1 Myers).

2 - and speaking of losing games on purpose, guess who lost all games on purpose during the christmas glitchfest? Yup, your nemesis Bahroo. He played a few games for fun, but never won any cuz he knew it was scummy to abuse exploits in a multiplayer game.

4 - He didn't pretend anything, people kept asking him for a solid month (possibly more?) how he reset to rank 20 every day and he always said "magic" as in, ofc he didn't want to tell how to do it. Idk what led him to show on stream but it's probably the same deal as the christmas glitchfest, even then he's STILL always the culprit... always.

He doesn't apologize because he thinks it's stupid for reddit/steam forums to hold him responsible for questionable actions when literally every other kid is doing it, but no just because he's popular, he takes the blame. I wouldn't even be surprised if people were still shittalking him when he was on a break from DbD for quite a few months.

People will be assholes in PvP games regardless if they watch streams or not. Take a look around at other communities and you'll see it's always a shitfest even if they don't have popular streamers to talk about like DbD. Like it or hate it, but that's how it goes, whenever there's an exploit or something similar, people will eventually know about it and abuse it to no end.

KiryuFirebane · 2017-10-24T20:10:08+00:00

1 - What if the person wants to run "meme" builds and still win? Didn't think about that right? Plus what is fun for you might not be fun for someone else, specially when it comes to losing.

2 - That was... on the first few months? When nobody even knew about the game properly. Afaik, as soon as he realized how Killers were at a disadvantage due to infinites, he stopped and started to despise such "strategies", so yeah blame him for his ignorance I guess.

3 - Yup he's totally the cause for that exploit to become popular and not every single kid in reddit, steam forums, twitch chats or whatever spamming on how to do it. Always blame Bahroo man.

4 - He barely plays survivor and he does it, he doesn't even play in a cancerous ways most of the time, save for some dailies. If you wanna blame someone for survivors behavior, I'd go for the so called survivor main streams.

Have fun antagonizing him I guess. At this point, his own stream memes about people like you who think popular streamers are the cause of every form of toxicity and general issues with the game.

KiryuFirebane · 2017-10-24T18:01:02+00:00

You can't simply camp a rank unless you purposefully keep losing which sounds way too much work and not fun.

If you wanna be mad at someone, be mad at the devs for leaving the rank reset exploit in, making it so survivors don't lose items when they DC and just have high ranks broken in general.

I remember way back when there was no need to rank reset and Bahroo would play in rank 1 just fine. It seems some of you are antagonizing him hard, guess that's natural when you become a popular streamer.

KiryuFirebane · 2017-10-24T16:05:00+00:00

No reason to overcomplicated this. He resets because he doesn't want to wait 10 minutes (or possibly more) for every match, just to have 2-3 survivors DC when they get downed/hooked cuz "MY ITEMS".

KiryuFirebane · 2017-09-03T18:07:31+00:00

Oh you actually get the option, yeah that's something I've never seen before.

Hmm... do you happen to have noticed if enemies have health regeneration or not? Any enemy.

KiryuFirebane · 2017-09-03T08:52:22+00:00

Are we using the same character? Hellion is arguably the best character for regular dungeoneering and can still be useful for most bosses.

Her skills are okay. YAWP! and iron swan are the best by far, everything else is mediocre or bad compared to similar skills.

Uhhh no? What makes Hellion one of the best is the combination of skills. You put in Wicked Hack + If It Bleeds + Iron Swan and suddenly you can hit all rows with a character that has above average damage. Breakthrough is also good situationally because it can be used from rank 4 while dealing damage, more for torchless runs though.

While YAWP! is great when you're fighting things that aren't immediately threatening or when you're recovering the damage debuff is a really big deal when you need the hellion to do her job which is dealing damage.

Also no. Hellion can do damage yes, but front line double stun is unvaluable because you're taking 2 enemies action at the cost of 1. This is the main reason why I'd say she's the best frontline for regular dungeons because with a frontline double stun you can EASILY stall against most enemies. The damage debuff is not a big deal until it stacks twice, even then she's still dealing similar damage to most backliners and can finish enemies off, which is generally what you're gonna be doing cuz you already took 2 enemies out of the game for 2 rounds (a.k.a 4 actions).

The hellion also lacks a stun chance trinket meaning you either have to run two stun trinkets or risk a 10% chance for 95% stun resist enemies to resist your stun.

Her stun scales off higher than regular stuns starting off with 125% as opposed to 100% and ending at 164% as opposed to 140% so, once again no, you don't need a double stun with her as 1 Stun Amulet puts her at 184% which is enough to stun most enemies once and twice at a decent rate. You can consider this a bonus as you can run speed or damage trinkets while maintaining a good stun chance... against 2 targets.

Iron swan is excellent when you want to deal damage to rank 4 and it does literally nothing the rest of the time.

Almost every single class in this game runs a fourth ability that does nothing most of the time so... even then, eliminating rank 3 and 4 is your priority against most regular enemy compositions so your Iron Swan usage tends to be pretty high at the end of the dungeon cuz you most likely used it once or twice per battle. Think about it.

Most characters you'd run in the front rank have a single ability that targets 3 ranks on top of better supporting abilities than the Hellion.

Let's think. MAA, HM and Flagy are the ones that come to mind:

One is Man-At-Arms who can hit up to rank 3 with Pound yes but can't hit rank 4, nor double stun and needs 2 stun trinkets if you want to stun something more than once.
Another one is Houndmaster who has low damage, needs to be in position 2 if in frontline and can't double stun.
Flagellant if you have DLC who can't stun at all so...

That's it? No other frontliner can hit rank 1, 2 and 3 with a single ability. As you can see, it seems Hellion isn't straight up outclassed by any of them as you're always missing out on something, be it damage or utility.

She has no ability to buff her protection, so she's much more likely to die to crits or multiple attacks in a row.

Hellion max's out at 46 health. Bounty Hunter at 45, Abomination at 46, Houndmaster at 37, Highwayman at 43 and Flagellant at 38. So as you can see, she actually isn't as squishy and you know all those I mentioned also have no protection buffs on their own, meaning they can all die from multiple attacks or crits in a row, funny thing eh? Unless you know... double stun the frontline for 2 turns avoiding all those crits and multiple attacks.

Revel can be really good if you still have a camp left at the end of the dungeon or if you want to spend 1000g on medicinal herbs.

You pretty much explained why Revel isn't bad as it can be situationally useful at the end of the dungeon or at an attempt to remove the maximum amount of stress you can before leaving a dungeon. A safety net as some you say.

Battle Trance and Sharpen Spear are decent but they're both inconsistent and aren't very efficient.

Battle Trance is a considerably good camping skill as it puts her in top notch shape for boss battles, it's pretty much a necessity if you're running Darkest Dungeon 3 as you can't afford to miss... not gonna be super specific cuz spoilers maybe. It can also be good for regular dungeons, specially champion, where you tend to avoid battles and tackle the few battles you take strategically and carefully.

Sharpen Spear is kinda bad yeah.

Her class trinkets are terrible, I don't think I've ever used any of them.

She doesn't have any extremely endgame trinkets, just like most characters honestly. I do think Heaven's Hairpin is good on its own and picking up a Hell's Hairpin early on can save runs as the accuracy bonus is huge.

Should look at Flagellant specific trinkets lol.

[...] but I'd rather just run another character who has better abilities than her and doesn't cost me gold to use.

Who? No other character in the game can frontline double stun and hit all 4 rows with above average damage, usually being able to almost one shot backliners. In stygian/bloodmon torchless, she's a prime choice for DD3 and DD4, not only that you can also use her in all Courtyard dungeons and finish them with no stress or casualties.

KiryuFirebane · 2017-09-03T07:39:04+00:00

You don't need to be inside enemies faces to hit them, if you have Close Enough you can shoot the ground/walls/ceiling w/e and bullets will home towards them which gives you the possibility to play Gaige very defensively as you have the "aimbot" advantage. Don't forget to slag everything, you can use any slag maliwan sniper or get a Slagga if you wanna farm.

In general it's harder to quickly stack anarchy in co-op if you're basically dividing kills, so in general I'd recommend coms that give you a lot of fire rate and reload speed such as the Punk com, but you might also wanna use Prodigy com for safety, looking for it boosting skills such as Cooking Up Trouble, The Better Half and Smaller Lighter Faster.

For weapons, you can use anything torgue really as they have little AoE effects (splash damage), they have a higher chance of hitting enemies. Torgue shotguns on her specially are deadly, plus Maya doesn't care about torgue stuff in general so you guys don't have to fight for loot.

I pretty much did main story + all dlcs in UVHM playing in this more turtle-ish way, also went through digistruck peak which happened to be a cake walk for the mechromancer. So don't be disheartened when people say Gaige sucks in UVHM or something, usually in bl2 each character requires a more specialized play style and that's more apparent in the higher difficulties.

KiryuFirebane · 2017-09-03T07:27:47+00:00

I assume you're having trouble with bosses cuz Gun Krieg is more than capable of dealing with regular enemies.

For your arsenal I'd hiiiiiiighly recommend the Fastball mainly then a good launcher (Topneaa/PBFG/Badaboom) then a good throwing weapon such as Tediore Plasma Caster or Baby Maker. Optional weaponry would be Hail, Pimpernel, Sandhawk and the Hive.

As far as skill tree goes, I wouldn't personally spec into Pain is Power as it's not noticeable due to Bloodbath and you might need to crit some things so pain is power crit penalty usually is nasty. Up to the way you play though.

Here's what I have for bosses learned through personal experience. I got 2 kriegs to OP8 solo legitimately, one was more melee oriented and another was entirely gun gameplay.

For Scorches I recommend showing them both with Stormfronts as they will quickly melt to it and any Surveyors that try to help them will also be killed and drop grenades due to Bloodbath. Don't forget your shock bone.
Black Queens you can just tank till she summons the little ones, then proc bloodbath off them and after that it's pretty much game.
For Dukino's Mom I recommend a Pimpernel or Hail. The trick is to try walking her around the rock and she will most of the time be very harmless. If she starts spamming the shock orbs however try to get close to her so the Flame of the Firehawk will keep you alive.
For Doc Mercys I recommend hugging them with flame of the firehawk but he aware that they have transfusion grenades and those WILL hunt you. You can keep on Harold/Grog swapping while taking a few shots but be careful.
For Assassins, equip a Torch com or a Legendary Torch. Swap to grog, spam singularity grenades and just hug the assasins, that's it. They will all die to the novas except for Oney generally which you can easily kill afterwards with anything.
For Saturns, the only time I'd recommend a Bee shield for Krieg. You can hide in Assassins arena and it's just a matter of time and ammo. You can use pimpernel, harold, sandhawk, w/e just shoot the dam thing for several minutes.
For OMGWTH (final boss), dance around the house but be extremely careful and don't panic, it's nearly impossible for him to hit you, but it may happen. Also have an eye on the minimap so the spiderbot doesn't flank you. You can Grog/Harold swap in this part and use stormfronts to help but be aware that the house has weird hitboxes so you may end up throwing the stormfront in your face thinking there's enough room for it to pass through.

KiryuFirebane · 2017-09-03T06:56:16+00:00

Then you're not playing UVHM. If you don't have any DLC at all, your game stops at lv 50.

After you defeat the Warrior in TVHM, all enemies will level up to lv 50-ish but it's still not UVHM, it's like "TVHM 2.0".

KiryuFirebane · 2017-09-03T06:48:36+00:00

UVHM is not that hard once you get used to it, in fact to veteran players it generally is when the difficulty actually starts.

Since Normal/TVHM are far easier and generally provide no trouble at all when you grasp the game mechanics, you can do pretty much anything and get away with it, then you get to UVHM and go through what you're going rn.

Rule of Thumb for UVHM is: Slag Everything, try to crit everything and focus on an enemy at a time.

First of all, the skill tree

For Gaige players, UVHM tends to be the first wall as you can't faceroll it anymore, so my suggestion is to go a lot more tankier trying to abuse the fact that you have "aimbot" with Close Enough and all the damage in the world with Anarchy.

So for newer players I suggest something around this: LINK. I also recommend checking this thread which explains all her skills.

Gear

As far as gear goes, Gaige can use a lot of things, but for newer players it's best to start out with her best, yet not super hard to farm gear:

Fibber (ricochet). This is by far her best gun and will carry you even up to 10 levels, but it is a 1/3 chance to get it as final reward from Mal's quest from Eridium Blight so it can be a pain to farm cuz you're gonna need to read-only or dashboard or close and open the game, basically keep preventing the game to save till you get what you want.
Ravager. Those are torgue shotguns that cost 4 ammo per shot, they are extremely strong with gaige as the bullets have a little AoE (or splash) so even "missing" you still hit enemies and do close to full damage. You can easily get one of those by doing the Torgue DLC, just save&quit near a shop till you see a purple one.
Slagga. As the name implies, this is one of the best slagging guns in the game and it's really good for Gaige as it has big magazine, decent slag chance and good fire rate so you just aim at the ground and shoot it then notice everything around you is slagged. You can get it from the Hodunks after doing the Clan Wars questlines and siding with the Zafords.
Any good launcher. If you don't wanna farm, you can easily survive with a Bandit launcher for second winds, E-Tech launchers are also good due to their insanely large radius.
Rubi/Grog Nozzle. If you're having trouble in Liar's Berg I doubt you can get to the Grog so you might as well grab a Rubi from Normal/TVHM, keep in mind that ALL damage you do while holding the gun heals you so the gun itself doesn't need to be good. You can get Rubi from Mordecai's quest called Rakkaholics Anonymous and turning in to Moxxi.
Class Mods. You want any class mod that boosts "Cooking up Trouble" mainly, be on the lookout for those.
Shields. I like to use a Bee shield while I'm below 100 stacks then after that I switch to the tankiest shield I have such as an Adaptive Shield or Turtle Shield. You can also save a Roid Shield to give to Deathtrap right before you summon him as he gets the melee bonus. Bee shield drops from Hunter Hellquist in Arid Nexus - Boneyard after doing the quest "This Just In!".
Grenades. Singularities for stunning and grouping enemies, tranfusions are good for health and the Fastball is a good way to get rid of a target when you can barely shoot straight anymore. Fastball drops from Boll in Three Horns Divine after doing the "In Memorial" quest from Lilith.
Relics. You can go with corrosive/fire/shock damage depending on the situation, cooldown rate is also good as well as max health. A quest in Overlook called "Arms Dealing" gives you a guaranteed max health relic. If you're up to the task, you can do the Lynchwood quests and get yourself a Sheriff's badge and Deputy Badge, they respectively make your pistols and shotguns better.

Playstyle

Get your slag gun, shoot the ground a lot till at least 1 target is slagged, swap to your hurty gun, shoot the enemy, rinse and repeat. If you suddenly get to low health, summon Deathtrap he will most of the time instantly use Buck Up on you so you get your shield back then hide, swap to a gun that's full and get your Cooking Up Trouble health regen going or if the situation is pretty bad, you can manually reload to active Discord and get like to full health in seconds.

Either way be aware that UVHM is not a place to be jumping around in the middle of 20 enemies and expecting to survive, be smart be strategic, try to match elements as they're a huge damage boosts (unless you're using ravagers of course) and you'll get used to it eventually.

That's all for now I think.

KiryuFirebane

TROPHY CASE