Borderlands 3 characters, who's the best class and who should you play as?

borderlands 3 character class best — (Image credit: gearbox)

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Amara
FL4K
Zane
Moze

Choosing the best Borderlands 3 characters to use will largely depend on your personal play style, as each of them offer a diverse mix of abilities and skills that stand them all apart. This means it's quite hard to rank the four options you have available, as technically any one of them could be the best option depending on how you intend to play the game. Because of this, you'll want to get to know each character and class in more detail, which I've provided here so you can get a better feel for them before you start Borderlands 3.

Whatever you pick, all the Borderlands 3 characters are fun. One lets you control animals, another lets you summon a mech, or deploy holograms, or use magical attacks - there's a lot to play with. So take a look at all of the Borderlands 3 characters, and their abilities below to help you make a choice.

Borderlands 3 characters and classes explained

Borderlands 3 character classes basics explained — (Image credit: gearbox)

There are four Borderlands 3 characters to choose from: Zane, Amara, Moze and FL4K. Amara will probably be the most familiar as she's a siren, the series magic-ish class using Phase power to teleport and attack enemies. However, all the classes have a range of unusual and diverse skills that makes them hard to classify.

You can check out each Borderlands 3 skill tree in more details here:

Borderlands 3 Zane skill tree
Borderlands 3 Amara skill tree
Borderlands 3 Moze skill tree
Borderlands 3 FL4K skill tree

Borderlands 3 characters abilities

Let's take a general look at the Borderlands 3 characters abilities to help you make a choice.

Amara

In Borderlands 3, Amara is generally good for crowd control thanks to her ability to damage groups of enemies or target specific problems. Her Phasegrasp is good for isolating big threats, while Phaseslam is good for clearing space with an area of effect blast. Finally Phasecast is a good way of hurting a few enemies in one go if you can bunch them up.

Phasegrasp - Amara summons a giant fist that bursts from the ground and locks the targeted enemy in place for a few seconds. Some enemies are immune to being grasped and instantly take damage instead.
Phasecast - Amara sends forward an Astral Projection of herself, dealing damage to everything in its path.
Phaseslam - Amara leaps into the air and slams the ground, dealing damage to all nearby enemies and knocking them up.

FL4K

In Borderlands 3, FL4K's main benefit is that they bring an animal along that can attack enemies and draw attention. There are three to chose from: a Spiderant that boosts health regeneration, a pistol totting Jaber that boosts speed and an acid vomiting Skag that increases damage. Each of these will attack enemies automatically, giving you both extra damage and a distraction, but you can also direct them with L1.

In addition FL4K's skills are largely focused on targeted damage although Gamma Burst is particularly good against crowds with a splash of radiation damage.

Fade Away - FL4K cloaks, turning invisible. FL4K can fire three shots while cloaked, and each shot is automatically a Critical Hit. While cloaked, FL4K gains increased movement speed and health regeneration.
Rakk Attack! - FL4K sends forward 2 rakk to dive-bomb enemies. This skill has multiple charges.
Gamma Burst - FL4K creates a rift at a target location, teleporting their pet through the rift and doing radiation damage to nearby enemies. Additionally, FL4K's pet becomes irradiated, growing in size and dealing bonus radiation damage when it attacks. Using Gamma Burst while FL4K's pet is downed or dead will revive the pet at the targeted location with 30% of its health, but will double Gamma Burst's cooldown time.

Zane

in Borderlands 3 Zane is a tricksy sort of support class with a protective barrier that boosts damage if you shoot through it and a Digi-Clone to distract enemies that you can also swap places with. He's also got a drone you can use to attack enemies.

Digi-Clone - Spawn a Digi-Clone of Zane. This clone stays in place, but distracts and fires at enemies. Pressing LB or RB while the Clone is active causes Zane and the Clone to swap places.
SNTNL - Send into battle an automated SNTNL drone that continually flies through the environment and attacks enemies with its Machine Guns. Pressing LB or RB while SNTNL is active causes it to attack the enemy under Zane's crosshairs if any.
Barrier - Drop a deployable Barrier that blocks incoming projectiles. Zane and his allies can shoot through the Barrier, dealing increased Gun Damage. Pressing LB or RB while Barrier is active picks up and holds the Barrier, but the size and bonuses are decreased.

Moze

In Borderlands 3 Moze is all about damage. Activating her skills summons her Iron Bear mech which can be equipped with one of three guns, as well as secondary augments including a flamethrower, missile launcher and melee punch. As the gunner she's built for that and little else.

Railgun - The Railgun fires electrified high-velocity projectiles that deal shock damage.
Minigun - The Minigun rapid-fires rounds and is capable of sustained fire. Firing the weapon for prolonged periods causes it to overheat and become inoperable for a short time.
V-35 Grenade Launcher - The V-35 is a semi-automatic grenade launcher. Despite firing grenades, its projectiles are unaffected by Moze's grenade mod.