Here Maya is seen viewing her Badass rank
Borderlands 2 discarded the weapon proficiency system from the first game in favor of Badass Rank. Badass Ranks are earned by completing available challenges which reward the player with a set amount of Badass Ranks per challenge. Many challenges have multiple tiers, giving increasing rewards for accomplishing more difficult tasks. Badass Rank applies across all characters on a profile. There are universal challenges that all characters can achieve, while each character also has some unique challenges only they can complete. Badass Rank (and consequently, Badass Tokens) is technically unlimited as you can continue to accrue more points by starting new characters on a profile and completing challenges with them.
The below table highlights the given reward for completing each challenge tier.
| Challenge Tier | Badass Rank Rewarded |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 5 |
| 3 | 10 |
| 4 | 50 |
| 5 | 100 |
Badass Tokens[]
After accumulating enough Badass Ranks the player is rewarded with a Badass Token, which can be spent on several incremental stat upgrades. These upgrades apply to all characters a player has, as all characters contribute to a single Badass Rank. Each time a token is redeemed, the player is given the choice between five randomly selected upgrades, and must choose one of those to spend the token on.
There are fourteen different stats available to upgrade.
- Critical Hit Damage
- Elemental Effect Chance
- Elemental Effect Damage
- Fire Rate
- Gun Accuracy
- Gun Damage
- Grenade Damage
- Maximum Health
- Melee Damage
- Recoil Reduction
- Reload Speed
- Shield Capacity
- Shield Recharge Delay
- Shield Recharge Rate
For each badass token you put into one of these stats, you receive diminishing returns as you progress.
| Points into stat | Bonus received for level | Total bonus stat |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1% | 1% |
| 2 | 0.7% | 1.7% |
| 3 | 0.6% | 2.3% |
| 4-8 | 0.5% | 2.8%-4.8% |
| 9-21 | 0.4% | 5.2%-9.8% |
| 22-81 | 0.3% | 10.2%-27% |
| 82-625 | 0.2% | 27.2%-125% |
| 626+ | 0.1% | 125.1%+ |