Overview
A guide to show how to deal the maximum damage with Kleese, as well as how to survive and provide the best support.
Kleese – Overview
Kleese, on the outside, looks like an extremely simple support class. His skills look to be for basic healing and hurting powers, example, wards that can heal ally shields and harm enemies, motors that can heal shields from long range (if you pick the right lvl 1 perk), and deal large amounts of damage to enemy shields, and finally a black hole to do nuke damage, and set up team attacks. You also have a taser for close-range self defense, and pocket-pistol, and a float jump for escapes. It all seems so simple…
Much like a complex math problem you do not understand from looks alone, Kleese is far more than meets the eye. He quite possibly has one of the most powerful quick nukes in the game… And no, the Black Hole is not at all what I’m talking about, it’s simply the means to aim it for 100% accuracy.
And even when he’s not nuking your sorry hide for roughly 800 damage every 12 seconds, he’s building a base of wards any melee character who wanders into will be torn asunder by, ripping your hp apart effortlessly, and all while keeping both his and his allie’s shields in tip top shape.
Abilities
Kleese opens up an Energy Rift that restores friendly Shields and deals damage to enemies.
These are by far the simplest of Kleese’s tools, but nonetheless one of his most important. They can easily be used to reinforce choke points by acting as both a refill station stations for you and your team, and barbed wire for the enemy.
Kleese shoots a barrage of Mortars at an area. Mortars damage enemies and deal bonus damage to Shields.
A rather weak skill that fires 6 22 damage mortars at the enemy, good for eliminating shields, but that’s about it. However, by the end of this guide, we’re gonna find a way to make that damage output much, much higher.
Kleese fires energy blasts from his Wrist Cannon. He also fires a powerful Shock Taser from his chair, dealing bonus damage to Shields.
For your primary fire, you have an accurate, but rather dinky unlimited ammo pistol. For your secondary, you have a close range, high damage, auto-aiming, highly augmentable taser. The catch is the taser does cost battery to use.
Kleese summons a Black Hole that pulls in enemies towards it dealing damage.
This is your Ult. It deals 334 damage to any Battleborn who can’t get away from it fast enough, while also sucking them into a singular spot. It’s a decent nuke, but it’s best use is a tool to help set up AOE nukes and ults.
Kleese rolls into battle in the most deluxe of all battle furniture. It increases Kleese’s maximum Shield capacity per level and can be used to extend jumps.
Your chair gives you two general buffs. A slightly increased shield size and the ability to hover for a double jump. Please note that the hover requires battery to use. If you run out, it might leave you in a bit of a pickle.
Kleese controls the battlefield through a variety of electrical based Shield attacks, stripping away his enemies’ Shields and Buffing his teammates’ Shields.
According to the game, your “goal” is to knock out enemy shields, while buffing your own team’s shields… Oh, we’re going to prove how wrong this is.
Helix Upgrades – Table
Mortars will heal friendly target’s sheilds. +22 Shield Heal
Energy Rift will shock nearby enemies dealing bonus shield damage. +50% Bonus Damage to Shields.
Energy Mortars will slow enemy targets they hit. +3 seconds Slow Duration.
Firing Energy Mortars will deplete Kleese’s shields and add it to their damage. +100% Current Shield as Damage.
Using Kleese’s Shock Taser in the air will cause Kleese’s Battle Chair to slam into the ground, depleting his chair energy and dealing damage to all enemies around him. +0 Damage.
Shock Taser now arcs to additional targets. +1 Additional Target.
Kleese’s Wrist Cannon now charges to fire a focused laser.
Energy Rifts will now link to each other when near each other. Their output will be increased times the number of rifts in the network.
Using Kleese’s Energy Mortars or Wrist Cannon attacks on an Energy Rift will now feed energy into the rift causing it to become unstable. Unstable rifts explode after a short time damaging nearby enemies. +133 Damage.
Kleese’s Tactical Battle Chair can heal nearby players every second. +120 Health per second.
Whenever Kleese dies, his Tactical Battle Chair explodes. +233 Damage.
Increases Kleese’s Tactical Battle Chair energy. +10 Chair Energy.
Kleese can have additional Energy Rifts alive in the world at the same time. +1 Rift.
Kleese can now fire additional Energy Mortars. +4 Mortars.
Decreases Energy Rift’s cooldown. -33% Cooldown Time.
Killing an enemy with Energy Mortars instantly recharges Kleese’s shield.
Energy Mortars now all fire at the same time, blanketing an area.
Kleese’s Energy Mortars will now bounce several times before exploding.
Kleese’s maximum shield strength is increased. +150 Maximum Shield Strength.
Kleese’s Shock Taser deals increased damage. +25% Damage.
Increases the max health of each Energy Rift. +500 Maximum Health.
Increases the pulse speed of Energy Rift. -33% Pulse Time.
Black Hole gives every friendly team member in range an overshield when it implodes. +225 Overshield.
Black Hole causes all friendly Energy Rifts in range to become an Unstable Rift and explode. +133 Damage.
Black Hole’s time to pull enemies is greatly reduced.
[/table]
Helix Upgrades – Build – Part 1
[color=#4db1ba]Shocking Twist[/color] or [color=#b779bf]Shocking Pulse[/color]
This perk is generally unimportant to you. Basically, count how many Eldrid characters are on each team (excluding Kelvin), if you have less Eldrid than the enemy, pick the Twist, if they enemy has less, pick Pulse… Though you can pick either, again, they both aren’t very important.
[color=#b779bf] Overloaded Mortars [/color]
This is where we separate the men from the mice. You can take the easy way out and pick the shiftless shells, a generally harmless perk that allows you to softly support the team… OR you can take the risk and exchange your shield for one of the best nukes in the entire game. Basically, let’s say you have the full 450 shield, and it’s filled up to max. Divided by 6, that’s 75 damage per mortar, plus the base damage of 22, your mortars now deal 97 damage per mortar, and deal a total of 582 damage if you land all 6. That’s MORE than your black hole! And not only that, but that’s not the limit! If you equip some sheild increasing gear, you can do even MORE damage! If you can get about 862 shield with the use of items, you can deal 994 damage total! That’s 165 damage per mortar, again, given your sheild is full! All you need to do in exchange is sacrifice your shield’s capacity, but so long as you have a rift farm to back recharge at, this is litterally no problem at all.
[color=#b779bf]Don’t Taze Me Bro! [/color] or [color=#81cc52]Quantum Precision[/color]
The chair slam is pretty bad, sadly. Sure, it allows you to cancel your float-jump early, but it does pretty mediocre damage, and empties your ENTIRE battery! And knowing that your going to be close to enemies if you go on the offense with this, you’ll be defenseless due to not having any battery! So just be smart with your float jumps, rather than depend on this crutch
Basically, replaced your pistol with Toby’s Railgun, but with a much slower charge, and a bit less damage. If you don’t like upfront confrontation, and prefer sniping rather than getting close you should go with this choice.
HOWEVER! If you’ve not afraid to get close, Don’t Taze me Bro!!! Will make your taser 100% better! With this upgrade, you an taze two people at once. But it’s not as simple as it sounds, your taser doesn’t just shock two people at once, but zaps one target, and it reflects onto another target OFF the first target, and proceed to zap whatever is closest. If you use it right, you can easily attack both Miko and it’s healing target at the same time, use a minion to auto-aim your taser for you, or just fight two targets at the same time. There are many, many tactics this can be used for, and makes self-defense/attacking much easier, and much more potent.
[color=#4db1ba]Rift Network[/color]
Basically put, placing rifts next to one another multiplies their power. Which allows you to do up to 249 damage per rift, to a total of 747 damage if an enemy is dumb enough to walk between all 3.
Unstable rift deals only 133 damage upon explosion, while also destroying your own ward. Not nearly as much damage, and at a cost. Never pick it, trust me. You’ll get far more results from the Rift Network. And if you’re bad at making networks… Then you need to get good, you you’re never going to be able to pull off the Overloaded Mortars, due to never having enough sheilds to get the max damage.
[color=#81cc52]Extended Battery Life[/color]
The Heal Chair can give heals…. But at a downright pathetic rate. 38 hp per second might be better than nothing, but it’ll take 30 seconds to only heal 1,140 hp, that’s 30 precious seconds your wasting to heal the equivalent of an Orendi. And in Battleborn, every second counts. And trust me when I say this thing’s range is so small, people will NEED to latch onto you to get any results. Trust me, it’s far more work than it’s worth, and oh yeah, you don’t get ANY of the healing yourself.
Also, the Surprise only happens when you die… Enough said.
The Extended Battery Life gives you more battery, meaning more taser fuel, more damage, and more hover jumps. It’s generally just a downright upgrade to your chair. But if you don’t have the mutation yet, pick the Heal Chair, cause at least it can be of some benefit to your team…. Though if your team is getting utterly slaughtered, pick the Surprise, at least then you might be able to take someone with you,and get some kills.
Helix Upgrades – Build – Part 2
[color=#4db1ba]Bulk Savings [/color]or[color=#81cc52] Rift Farm[/color]
True, the mortars are your most powerful weapon, and picking this will add two extra mortars with no division penalties (if mortars did 75 damage prior to picking this, to a total of 472 damage, it will not be divided by 8 when picking this, thus will add damage to your assult), but it will leave you slightly more vulnerable. Those two extra mortars can leave you firing a bit longer than you wanted, and can make retreating after firing a bit harder.
You’ll want to pick either of the Rift upgrades, not only to keep your Mortar attack quick and clean, but to also give your rifts a well needed upgrade.
Basically, with Bulk savings, you can up your Rift count, and if you picked Rift Network like a sane person, your rifts will deal 332 damage per pulse, and a total of 1,328 if they all hit their target. So you can basically kill any battleborn in 2-3 pulses if they have no HP buffs, or medic in their pocket.
Rift Farm, however, just decreases your Rift cooldown by 33%. You won’t do the insane damage like with bulk savings, but you will be able to send out wards faster, thus you will be able to build your farms faster, and rebuild faster if they get crushed. By making your rifts more expendable, you can make farms in more dangerous areas more easily.
[color=#81cc52]Bouncing Balls of Death[/color]
First off, don’t pick the Tampered. It’s accuracy decrease makes it near impossible to get max damage with your mortars unless it’s point blank. You want the MAX damage with your mortars! Ceasing your fire faster may be helpful, but not at the cost of crippling your damage output!
Geezer Pleezer is good, but it’s too risky. It’s great for PVE, but unless your SURE, like ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN you’re going to get a kill, your not going to get any benefit. It can be used to clear creep waves more easily with no risk to yourself, however, but it’s still not worth the risk of making yourself vulnerable to a possible ambush.
The Bouncing Balls of DEATH are by far the most reliable of the perks. If you pick this, you will almost always hit your mark. If you miss, balls can bounce off the ground and fly around to possibly nail someone else, or be shot at the ground for more reach. You can also shoot walls to hit enemies running around corners, or hit enemies in usually safe areas. Finally, it almost guarantees your direct hits, no splash damage reductions from just BARELY hits, just pure damage for max damage. So long as you aim for the enemy, your mortars will usually always directly hit after bouncing, guaranteeing max damage. If you don’t have this perk, go with Geezer Pleezer for the occasional shield refill.
[color=#4db1ba]Brains Before Brawn[/color] or[color=#b779bf] Brawn Before Brains [/color]
Brains before Brawn will further up your shield by 150, giving you 600 shield! Which can be used to even further up your mortar damage, as well as keep you alive longer! But Brawn vs Brain will directly up your taser damage, which speaks for itself! Your taser already does high damage, so add 25% to that. Do the math!
[color=#b779bf]Quick Pulse[/color]
More HP is nice, but more pulses means more damage, more healings, and generally more domination.
[color=#81cc52]Insta-Hole[/color]
Quicker hole activation is just a downright upgrade. Destroying your own wards is always a bad idea, even for a bit more damage, and the overshield is hard to land, and is just nowhere as useful as the Insta-Hole.
Tactics – Part 1
Now, let’s just face it, your mortars MIGHT be able to do about 1000 damage per use, but what are the odds you’re going to land all of them? The enemy is usually going to almost always be moving, and use your lack of shields against you, and slaughter you like a pig. If only there was some way to GUARANTEE all your shots hit, allowing you to kill almost any threat in your way!….
Put quite simply, fire off a black-hole in an area near an enemy.group of enemies, aim your mortars twords the black hole’s center, and right before activation, fire off your mortars. All enemies will be pinned to the center of the hole, meaning if you launch your mortars JUST before it activates you’ll be able to hit all your shots while the enemy is momentarily pinned down, meaning you will land ALL your shots, so long as nobody body-blocks, in which case, who cares? Cause you still got damage in.
Now, math time! Your black hole does 334 damage if it lands, plus your motors damage (at full with no shield upgrades, it’s 582), you will do a maximum of 916 damage if you land all your shots on a single person, not including the splash damage you will do to all nearby targets. And EVEN THEN, that’s the minimum maximum damage you can do! If you do get some gear that ups your sheild (say 140 shield from a full battery gear, and 82 sheild from a Legendary/Epic gear’s secondary stat), you can do 1,006 damage! And that’s without Brain over Brawn, which can further up the damage to 1,156 damage!
Put blankly, you can slaughter any medium-hp battleborn in 1 false swipe, while critically wounding High-HP targets, and dealing high damage to anyone who just so happens to be in the crossfire. And that’s ONLY if they have full hp! If they have any for of decent wounds on them, they will die, no question. Only people who are going to live are tanks and some brawlers.
And if this sounds low to you, I’ll let you know this is by far the BIGGEST NUKE in Battleborn. Not even Ambra’s Meteor can remotely compare in damage! Not even the Airstrike can compare due to it’s accuracy and damage! It’s the most deadly attack you can perform in a short instance, and it can be performed as soon as you hit lvl 5.
[color=#803380]BUILD-A-BASE WORKSHOP[/color]
No matter how you play Kleese, support or downright offense, you MUST make a base. And by base, I mean reinforcing a choke-point to increase its difficulty to pass by damaging any enemy that enters, and healing your allies defending it.
There are many placed to place a base, but it all depends on what mode your in.
Incursion: Place your base on the entranceway to your sentry, a bit on the inside of your base for defence, and near the outside of the enemy base on offense. On the second point on offense, you’ll want to place your base in a more reinforced area, such as the mini-bunker on Overgrowth, the upper side-base on Echelon, and the caves to the thumper on Monuments.
Capture: Just place your base on any point, it’s as safe as your gonna get.
Meltdown: The best place for a base is smack dab in the middle of a lane, or right by your accelerator. The middle is a good place for offense to take out bots, since that’s where most of them will meet up to fight, and accelerator so you have a good place to retreat if the enemy is a bit too aggressive.
PvE: Kleese can only really build bases on defense maps, and when you are on one, the best place is usually right on the defense point.
There are many other locations you can place a base, but these are the most basic and generally most helpful areas.
[color=#803380]YOUR BASE IS YOUR SAFE-HAVEN[/color]
Now, if you do the Overloaded mortars, your gonna have a slight problem with your shields. Whenever you fire off your barrage of death, you will lose your shields. Remember, besides being vulnerable, means you won’t do any bonus damage if you don’t refill by the time your mortar’s cooldown is done. So whenever you fire off your death barrage, head back to your base for a recharge.
You CAN recharge on your own passively like all normal Battleborn, but your shield is most likely so big, it’s going to take a REALLY long time to recharge fully for another good mortar assault. However, it will be a flash if you can reach your base, since your rifts, so long as you got the rift network working, you should get your shield filled in 2-3 good pulses. Afterwords, you’ll be good and ready for another good over 700 damage nuke.
[color=#803380]YOUR TASER IS YOUR BEST FRIEND[/color]
Remember, your taser is the most reliable weapon. Even though your Energy Mortars are your most powerful weapon, it has a cooldown, and requires a shield recharge to get working at full power. Your taser also has a slight cooldown due to your battery, but your battery recharges at a pretty reliable rate, and even then, one full battery’s worth of 2000 Watts of electricity should be enough to critically wound anyone who tries to get up close and personal. It’s also incredibly reliable to finish off any low HP enemy.
Also, if you you got Don’t Taze Me Bro!!!, you should be able to ricochet your tasers off a minion, and onto an enemy from around corners, or just use it at a thunder rod for more reliable results.
Tactics – Part 2
[color=#803380]BE CAREFUL WHERE AND HOW YOU HOVER JUMP[/color]
Your hover jump can be used to easily get to areas otherwise impossible to reach for most Battleborn, hover over Bot waves for escapes, and generally get in and out of combat rather easily. HOWEVER, remember unless you get the crappy chair slam, you CANNOT cancel your hover jump preemptively. You have no idea how many times I’ve slowly hovered to my death trying to escape from an enemy, but to do it a little late, and end up bumping into a wall, leaving me a target on a dart-board. Also, you can’t turn while hovering, so if you hover straight ahead, you become a easily shootable balloon.
It’s also good to keep an eye on your momentum. You hover only as fast as your moving, so if you’re slowed, or not sprinting, you’re not going to get far, and you’re a much easier target.
And please, for the love of god, watch where you’re going before you activate hover… Too many Kleeses have lost their lives by slowly hovering off a cliff.
[color=#803380]YOU’RE NOT SUBTLE[/color]
If there’s an enemy sniper, you’re going to want to stay out of their sight unless you find a way to flank them. Why? Your chair is rounded, a very bright color, essentially has lights and sirens on it, and your head is about in the center of it. Yes, you are LITERALLY a moving target. You’re not hard to spot out and snipe, so stay out of sight of anyone who can potentially snipe your fine hide.
In cause you forgot, your mortars do additional damage to shields. That’s not really too handy when casually fighting battleborn, since one well placed Overloaded Mortar can decimate their puny shields. However, there is one thing that extra shield damage can be reliably used on, and that’s the Sentry’s shields on Incursion.
Let’s just say you can easily wipe out more than half that thing’s shields in a single barrage, given you took Overloaded Mortars, and upped your shield size a bit.. So if you can manage to get close enough under the cover of your allies, you can easily open the way for your allies to give the enemy sentry a solid thrashing.
[color=#803380]YOUR RIFTS PULSE IMMEDIATELY UPON ACTIVATION[/color]
While the Rifts are the simplest part of Kleese, there is one trick you should know to get the maximum use from them. And that’s that they give out a pulse as soon as they spawn.
Put very basically, if there’s an enemy running away with only 50 hp, and you can’t quite reach him with your taser, or can’t shoot him straight, you can plop down a rift right next to him, which will pulse, and knock him out with it’s instant 83 damage. This same tactic can also be used in reverse, allowing you to instantly heal 83 of your own shield while escaping, or heal an ally for the same amount to assist an escape.
Sure, you might ruin your Rift nest momentarily, but you can always just rebuild it, and getting away with your life, or ensuring a kill is always more important than a rebuildable nest.
Gear and Groups
Generally, when picking gear, you’re going to want things that compliment your high power Mortars and shields. Some legendary recommendations would be the Pacifier for it’s sheild increase, better taser power, and the ability to reduce enemy damage for defensive reasons. Also the Intermittent Angel for a good chance to refill your shields after a Mortar strike. Finally the Modernista for solid shield upgrades, decreased cooldowns, and a chance to reflect bullets that hit your shield.
There are other things you might want to look into, such as skill damage, and perhaps shield recharge, but these are the ones I so far have found most useful.
[color=#f27c06]Intermittent Angel[/color]
[color=#f27c06]The Modernista[/color]
[color=#f27c06]The Pacifier[/color]
Lore/Challenges
[color=#24f0ed]Slow, Not Dead[/color] – Kill 50 enemies affected by [color=#fff7e0]Black Hole[/color]
It can be a bit tricky to get this one done, seeing how the [color=#fff7e0]Black Hole[/color] is more of a tool than a weapon. However, you can easily knock this one out by gibbing some Jennerit enemies in PvE within an hour or so.
[color=#24f0ed]Introducing: The Magnus[/color] – Do 10,000 Shield damage with [color=#fff7e0]Energy Mortars.[/color]
If you read anything on this guide, you’ll know this is not going to be a remote problem.
[color=#24f0ed]A Shocking Message[/color] – Damage 100 enemies with Kleese’s [color=#fff7e0]Shock Taser[/color].
Just taze stuff unti you get it! Simple enough.
[color=#24f0ed]Ride of the Battle Throne[/color] – Play as Kleese at least once in every map in the game.
This is going to be the longest challenge. You may want to grab some friends, and just try and clear the story mode together, with you being designated Kleese. You don’t need to WIN the maps, only play on them once. The real challenge is getting enough people to vote on maps like Echelon and either Capture map in PvP. But with enough friends, anything is possible.
[color=#24f0ed]I Care About You. No, Really[/color] – Restore 50,000 shield strength to allies with [color=#fff7e0]Energy Rift[/color].
You’ll generally just get this one over time so long as you play online. Don’t worry about it.
Your reward for completing all of these challenges:
[color=#f27c06]Energetic Refractor[/color]
The End
Dear Reader,
This guide for Kleese was written by The Kawaii King. By that I mean that about 90% of the info of this guide was written by him. I just worked on the formatting and all that jazz, though this guide is fairly similar to my own.
If you’d like to check out some of the guides that were actually written by me, check these ones out.
[color=#8519bf]Galilea[/color]
[color=#46ba1f]Miko[/color]
If you’d like to check out some of the other guides that were written by The Kawaii King, please post on his profile about how he needs to get off his lazy butt and write more guides.
I’m currently working on 3 other Battleborn character guides, so Follow me if you want to catch them as soon as they come out.
If you enjoyed this guide, press that “thumbs-up” button and consider setting adding it to your Favorites so you can find it easily in the future.
If you have any questions about Kleese or anything you think we need to add to the guide, let us know in the Comments section below.
May all your laughs be evil,
-KotL.