Loveless the Hacker landed on September 10 alongside Version 1.10, which also pushed the level cap up by ten levels for every Borderlands 4 player. At 70, her Virology tree finally has enough points to run Contagion as a full damage engine rather than a side effect, and the shuriken setup below leans entirely on that: infect everything, let kills spread the infection, and let corrosive explosions finish the job.
Quick answer: Equip Plague Star, put 41 points into Virology and 29 into Hack / Slash, take Host Compromise as your augment and replicat.exe as your capstone, then run a Restorative Virophile class mod with a Watts 4 Dinner shield and an Atomic Supermassive Waterfall grenade.
Contagion damage loop: how the shuriken build actually kills
Plague Star throws a digistructed shuriken that pierces enemies, deals corrosive action skill damage, and applies Contagion, a corrosive damage-over-time effect that stacks. When an infected enemy dies, the virus jumps to up to three new targets and carries over half of the stacks the dead enemy had. Holding the action skill button instead triggers the Executable, which consumes every active Contagion and detonates it as corrosive damage in an area.
That loop feeds Loveless’ RAM trait. Critical hits and status effects fill the RAM bar, gun damage scales with how full the bar is, and a full bar turns her next melee into an Empowered attack that consumes all of it. Because this build applies status effects constantly, RAM stays high almost by default, which is a large chunk of its gun damage.
Skill point split: 41 in Virology, 29 in Hack / Slash
Respec first and confirm Plague Star is the equipped action skill before spending anything, because the capstone and augment used here only exist on the Virology side. The bulk of the points go green, with the blue tree bolted on for gun and movement scaling.
Virology (green) allocation
| Skill | Points | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Toxic Chat | 5/5 | Increased corrosive damage, plus a kill skill that adds bonus corrosive damage to guns |
| Established Gameplay Loop | 5/5 | Gun damage and reload speed every time you apply an elemental effect or Contagion |
| Cat 5 | 5/5 | Increased elemental damage and status effect chance |
| Conservation of Malice | 5/5 | Sustain tied to your action skill and Contaminants |
| It’s Super Effective | 1/5 | Single filler point |
| When It Rains | 3/3 | Status effect scaling |
| Blackhat | 3/3 | Damage support for the Contagion package |
| It Pours | 1/1 | Follow-up to When It Rains |
| Memory Leak | 1/1 | Single-point node on the way down the tree |
| Depletion Load | 5/5 | Bonus radiation gun damage after any Action Skill, Function, or Executable |
| Circular Logic | 3/3 | Status damage builds stacks that are consumed for increased action skill damage |
| Immunoppressant | 3/3 | Damage reduction stacks whenever you apply a status effect |
| Unsupported Peripheral | 1/1 | Free grenade on every Action Skill, Function, or Executable |
Unsupported Peripheral is doing more work than a one-point skill usually does here. Every shuriken throw and every Executable also throws whatever grenade mod you have equipped, which is why the grenade choice below matters so much.
Hack / Slash (blue) allocation
| Skill | Points |
|---|---|
| Disdain | 5/5 |
| Odium | 3/3 |
| Ratio Technique | 2/5 |
| Neutral Special | 1/1 |
| Footwork | 4/5 |
| The Sweet Science | 5/5 |
| Siliconventional Warfare | 5/5 |
| End Process | 3/3 |
Augment and capstone: Host Compromise and replicat.exe
Host Compromise is the augment. It widens the Contagion spread when an infected enemy dies, so a single kill in a packed room turns into a chain of new infections instead of the default three targets.
replicat.exe is the capstone, and it changes the Executable completely. Holding the action skill spawns three shurikens that orbit you, dealing corrosive damage and carrying a chance to inflict Contagion on anything they touch. Tapping the action skill throws one of the orbiting shurikens at a target, so you can either hug a crowd and let them grind or fire them off individually at a boss.
| Alternative | Effect |
|---|---|
| Recursion (augment) | Partially restores Executable cooldown when Contagion hits a new enemy, and restores action skill cooldown on Executable kills |
| Lag Switch (augment) | Doubles active Contagion stacks on every enemy and grants Overshield based on the stacks |
| proliferat.exe (capstone) | Throws two homing shurikens that collide into a corrosive nova and spawn mini shurikens that inflict Contagion |
| Burst Finish (capstone) | Ties into the Visual Paradox Nexus clone package rather than Contagion |
Gear for the Level 70 Loveless shuriken build
The class mod is the piece that decides how the build feels. Restorative Virophile pushes the corrosive explosion side, which is what you want when Contagion is already everywhere. Everlasting Plague Engineer is the alternative if you would rather lean harder on status effect spreading.
| Slot | Pick | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Class mod | Restorative Virophile | Corrosive explosions; Everlasting Plague Engineer swaps in for status spreading |
| Shield | Watts 4 Dinner | Overshield plus bonus shock damage; Super Soldier is the fallback |
| Enhancement | Vindictive Primadiem | General damage support |
| Mobbing gun | Flash Cyclone | Area damage that spreads infection across a group fast |
| Boss gun | Crow-Sourced | Single-target output when there is nothing to chain into |
| Flex gun | Broken Wings | Swan Song, Shalashaska, Scoot & Shoot, and Darkbeast also fit |
| Grenade | Atomic Supermassive Waterfall | Singularity effect pulls enemies into one cluster for the spread |
| Repkit | Mega Triple Bypass | Healing uptime between infections |
Note: because Unsupported Peripheral throws a free grenade on every action skill input, the Atomic Supermassive Waterfall is effectively part of your rotation rather than a button you press occasionally. The singularity bunches enemies together right before the Contagion spread fires off.
Specializations to take
- Groundbreaker
- Now With Caffeine
- I Am A Gun
- A Honed Mind
- Riddle You This
Combat rotation for mobbing and bossing
How to tell the build is working
You should see corrosive damage numbers ticking on enemies you have not shot, new infection icons appearing on nearby enemies the moment an infected one dies, and secondary corrosive explosions going off a beat after the first. The RAM bar should sit near full during a fight and your melee should show as Empowered regularly.
If the chain stalls, the usual causes are narrow. Contagion only spreads on the death of an infected enemy, so killing uninfected targets first breaks the loop. The orbiting shurikens only exist while replicat.exe is active, which means you need the capstone unlocked and the action skill held rather than tapped. And spread has nothing to travel to when enemies are scattered, which is the whole reason the singularity grenade is in the loadout.
The setup holds up in extended endgame content, including runs through The Shape of Slaughter: Mayhem Takedown at Hadron Abyss, where dense enemy waves let the Contagion chain reach its full effect. Boss fights ask for the opposite discipline, since you are leaning on individual shuriken throws and raw gun damage instead of the spread.
