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Back 4 Blood Holly build: best build for Holly

Learn how to make the best Holly build in Back 4 Blood

Holly in Back 4 Blood
Image credit: Image provided by Turtle Rock Studios

Want to know the best Holly build in Back 4 Blood? Holly is our own Alice Bee’s favourite character, and with very good reason. Holly recovers 10 stamina each time she kills a Ridden, gets +10% damage resistance, and even gives the whole team an extra 25 stamina. However, with the right cards, you can push Holly even further, making her an absolute powerhouse and solidifying her position as one of the best characters in Back 4 Blood.

This guide will show you how to create the best Holly build in Back 4 Blood, so you can dive into a session and start punching, stabbing, and smacking Ridden with your choice of melee weapon.

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Best Holly build in Back 4 Blood

If you like melee weapons, then Holly is your gal. She starts with a baseball bat, which is one of the better melee options, but if you really want to excel, you should try to grab a Machete. The Machete is undoubtedly one of the best weapons in Back 4 Blood, so it’s worth tracking one down as fast as possible.

Our Holly build focuses on increasing your melee damage to ridiculously high levels, whilst also making sure you never need to worry about stamina. With this Holly build, you can relentlessly swing your machete without a care in the world, and as long as there are zombies to kill (which there always are), you'll have stamina to burn.

Since our Holly build is also one of the best melee builds in Back 4 Blood, you'll be up close and personal with the Ridden throughout your adventure. To help you survive their bloodthirsty attacks, we've included a few cards that will also help you quickly recover some health, so that you don't spend most of the level begging a friend to revive you.

Use the following cards in your Holly build:

  • Adrenaline Fueled
  • Battle Lust
  • Meth Head
  • Mean Drunk
  • Batter Up
  • Spiky Bits
  • Berserker
  • Ignore The Pain
  • Vanguard
  • Face Your Fears
  • Mugger
  • Dash
  • Fleet Of Foot
  • Run Like Hell
  • Evasive Action

As mentioned above, Holly gets stamina back for every kill. Adrenaline Fueled bolsters this significantly, doubling the amount of stamina that Holly has whilst also allowing you to recover another 20 stamina per kill. With this card active, Holly basically never runs out of stamina, so pop it at the top of your Holly deck to become an unstoppable killing machine right from Act 1. If you haven't already got this card, take a look at our Supply Lines guide to see how to get more Supply Points and cards.

Holly deck in Back 4 Blood, highlighting the Adrenaline Fuelled card

Battle Lust is a crucial card, so definitely put it in the second slot and activate it straight away. Trust me, you’ll be grateful. Getting up close and personal with hungry corpses can be a dangerous job, and Holly loses HP fast. Battle Lust helps avoid some of that pain so that you don’t have to hog all of the bandages (which your teammates will certainly appreciate). Further into the deck, Vanguard and Face Your Fears increase your healing capabilities substantially, so you’ll never need to think about healing again. Oh, and your teammates will like you more, because they’ll get some temporary health too!

For the third slot, we’ve taken the Meth Head card from our Evangelo build. It isn’t quite as high on the list here, but that extra attack speed and stamina efficiency is just as important. It does disable your ability to aim down sights, but Holly doesn’t need guns when she’s clearing hordes with a single blade.

The next 5 cards in our Holly build, from Mean Drunk to Ignore The Pain, are all about damage. Sweet, sweet damage. Melee attacks are already pretty strong in Back 4 Blood, but with these cards you can increase your melee damage by over 150%. That’s a lot of one hit kills, even on some Special Ridden. Mean Drunk does disable sprint, which might sound a little outlandish. However, the damage boost is huge, and there are plenty of cards later in the deck to help boost your movement speed.

Whilst you’ve been swinging and slashing without a care in the world, your teammates have probably been struggling to even keep their ammo stocked. With this Holly build you should be ridiculously powerful by now, so use your final card slot to give a much-needed boost to your teammates. Mugger makes all melee kills have a 2% chance to spawn ammo, which might not seem like much, but it really does add up when you’re cleaving through hordes with ease.


That’s everything you need to know to make the best Holly build in Back 4 Blood. If you need more help fighting back against the dead, check out our tips and tricks page. If you want to explore some of the other character options, take a look at how you can unlock all the cleaners in Back 4 Blood. To get into a match with your friends quickly, make sure to check out how to enable crossplay.

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