In less than a week, Borderlands 2 will be getting a brand new playable character. Krieg the Psycho will be joining the original four Vault Hunters and Gaige as a DLC addition.
Krieg escaped from a lab buried beneath Pandora, and his only known goals are to "kill bandits, kill Hyperion, and get revenge." Interestingly, despite being a hulking killing machine, Krieg has an inner conscious who makes sure he only kills deserving people. If Krieg were to ever kill an innocent, his inner voice will take over and make him commit suicide. Sounds like an interesting character to me.
Krieg's skill set has also been revealed.
His Action Skill is Buzz Axe Rampage, which allows him to swing or throw his buzz axe. It deals 500% melee damage, and heals him on a kill. It lasts around 15 seconds and has a 120 second cooldown that decreases as you take damage.
He has three skill trees: Bloodlust, Mania, and Hellborn.
Bloodlust focuses on ranged combat, and allows you to stack instances of Bloodlust by dealing damage, up to a maximum of 100. These stacks effect the abilities in this tree, and expire after a few seconds of inactivity.
Abilities in this tree include Blood Twitch, which increases weapon swap speed based on your Bloodlust stacks, Buzz Axe Bombardier, which adds dynamite to your thrown buzz axes, and Bloodsplosion, which causes enemies to explode, dealing area damage based on your Bloodlust stacks.
The Mania tree focuses on melee damage, health, and the Fight for Your Life mechanic.
Abilities in this tree include Silence the Voices, which greatly increases your melee damage (but causes you to accidentally attack yourself once in a while) and Release the Beast, which refills your health and turns you into a Badass Psycho Mutant.
The Hellborn tree focuses on elemental effects, especially ones that set yourself on fire. Certain abilities in this tree improve while on fire.
Abilities in this tree include Fire Fiend, which causes your melee attacks to set fire to enemies, Numbed Nerves, which reduces damage taken while on fire, and Raving Retribution, which creates homing fireballs to attack your enemies while on fire.
Krieg will be released on May 14, 2013.