General Axton questions

Borderlands 2 Axton the Commando
#1

Hi guys, i have a hard question that i dont know enough about to decide. Based ONLY on their skill trees, would Axton or Maya boost the damage of weapons more? I dont really care about Phaselock or the Turret, only skills like Impact and Wreck. This assuming that Axton uses Grenade splash weapons. Without factoring in DPS and looking only at sheer power, who would win? (Planning on using a legendary soldier and a legendary Siren, not sure if it makes any difference.) Thank you SO much, guys.

#2

It’s hard to compare those two skills as Wreck depends on having a target PL- Accelerate might be the better comparison. With Maya you can also add in Mind’s Eye (although it only affects critical damage), Immolate (when in FFL) and of course Reaper.

Axton not only has gun damage boosting skills but rate of fire boosting kill skills so you could consider Onslaught and Metal Storm, Last Ditch Effort (a FFL skill) and most of the Gunpowder tree. In short as far as straight gun damage skills Axton has Impact (20% at 5/5) and Ranger (5% at 5/5); situational and kill skills like Duty Calls (25% with non-elemental weapons at 5/5), Steady (25% grenade, 20% RL damage at 5/5) Onslaught (30% at 5/5) and Last Ditch Effort (40% at 5/5).

Maya has Accelerate (15% at 5/5) and situational skills such as Mind’s Eye (25% critical hit damage and 30% melee damage at 5/5), Immolate (50% fire damage in FFL at 5/5) and Reaper (40% damage at 5/5 when a target has more than half of their health).

Based on all this, I’d say play with the one you most enjoy…:grin:

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#3

Thank you! As far as Reaper being multiplicative, is that 40% a HUGE amount more than 40% additive?

#4

As long as you have some additive buffs behind it (like wreck, accelerate, and kind of mind’s eye) then yes. Multi buff get more powerful when there are more numbers to multiply.

Axton works in a similar way with his grenade bonuses. His grenade skills are worth more when there is more gun damage behind them.

If you’re looking at it purely from a damage per shot perspective (assuming OP8 class mods and an average build for both characters), then it would be:

Axton (w/ leg. soldier)- Impact [40%] + Leg. soldier gun damage [34%] + battlefront [30%] + Onslaught [30%] * Steady, battlefront, & do or die [65%] or [1.65]

Maya (w/ leg. siren)- Accelerate [30%] + Wreck [30%] + Leg. siren gun damage [39%] * Mind’s Eye [25%] or [1.25] * Reaper [40%] or [1.4]

I’ll stop here, because I’m fairly certain I’ve messed something up already. If you want to compare, I’d suggest taking your characters down to TVHM and testing their damage against the warrior (big stationary target with lots of phase-lockable adds and easy crit spot). Use the same weapon for consistency. See which does more. It won’t be a perfect comparison, but should suffice for your purposes.

BTW, could someone number check me here? 'm pretty bad at numbers, and I don’t want to mess up the OP.

#5

This is very much a case-by-case scenario

Broad strokes:

Axton has more additive gun damage and they are easier to activate, it’s very straightforward. Most of them are kill skills or activate when you have your turrets out.

Maya has less, but she has multiplicative bonuses in reaper and Chain Reaction. Overall, her bonuses are a bit more complicated and involved to bring forth since they require different situations for each (Reaper requires an enemy to be above 50% health, Chain reaction requires that you are trying to kill more than one target to work (so that the bullets actually have a second target to ricochet to), Wreck only works during phaselock…

Short answer: Maya has more potential when all conditions are met, but Axton is more straightforward and reliable

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#6

I don’t really know how you can do that without factoring in DPS, since it is the most tangible measure of sheer power.

…so that’s what I used in my answer anyway

#7

Depends on what else you have:

If you have no additive bonuses, it’s the equivalent of 40% … just like a normal bonus
If you have, say, 100% additive bonus, it’s like an 80% bonus

On characters with lots of additive bonuses (Maya, Axton, Gaige) a multiplicative bonus is awesome, and totally worth it over most other bonuses.

On other characters, it’s nice. It’s still always better than an additive bonus though.

Short answer: Yes, very yes, Reaper is awesomesauce

#8

Sure :slight_smile:

You can’t really factor in a crit bonus like Mind’s eye like that (well, in a steril math environment, the result is the same, but there is more to it, so I would leave it out personally)

Not quite right with the last part since grenade damage only boosts the splash portion of explosive weapons, so it’s worth a bit less than half of that

It is indeed the same as a multiplicative bonus (since splash is a function of gun damage, increasing gun damage will boost splash, so increasing splash damage separately will result in the splash portion being increased in a multiplicative way) But the bullet part doesn’t receive the bonus…

#9

@adamplaga

It’s much easier to work with % bonuses when you express them as decimals instead (so 60% becomes 0.6, 140% becomes 1.4 and so on)

Axton: 1 (base) + 0.4 (Impact) + 0.34 (Leg. Soldier) + 0.3 (battlefront, gun portion) + 0.3 (onslaught) = 2.34 (or 134% (since without any bonus, you will deal 100% or normal damage))

Then, you factor in the grenade bonus: Splash damage is a bit different on each type of gun, 100% for some unique guns, 85% for shotguns… let’s say that for the sake of convenience you are using a gun that has 100% splash damage.
So for each point of damage you inflict, you deal an extra point of splash damage

If you boost base damage, you increase splash damage as well
But if you increase splash damage alone, you will not increase bullet damage

Since splash represents half of the damage you deal, even if you double your splash damage, you only increased your total damage by 50%

So using the equation @boombumr made, we can add 65% (total of 1.65) And then apply it to half of your listed damage.

Or in simple terms, you get 1.325 multiplicative bonus

Total is: 2.34 X 1.325 = 3.1 (or a little over 3 times your original damage)

Maya now:

1(base) + 0.3 (accelerate) + 0.3 (wreck) + 0.4(leg Siren…rounded because i’m lazy) = 2.0

Now you factor in Reaper, which only applies to about … maybe 75% of an enemy’s total health (This is arbitrary since it will vary a lot)
1 + (0.4 X 0.75) = 1.3
2.0 X 1.3 = 2.6 (or a little over 2.5 times your original damage)

Then you can start factoring in all the things Maya has that are more circumstantial (while we’re pretty much done for Axton) Like Chain reaction, the fact that she can match elements while Axton cannot (since we assumed an Explosive build) and things like Mind’s eye when you get a crit.

Overall, When played right and in the right circumstances, Maya wins, hands down, but of course you’re not always in the right circumstances, and she has trouble with bosses (since they tend to really not be the right circumstances)

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#10

Thank you Chuck, this helped tremendously!

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#11

Sorry i have just one more question! When matching elements against say, a bandit, how much more would fire do than explosive? Is it massive? I love the decimals as opposed to percents, by the way. Makes it way easier to comprehend.

#12

On flesh:
explosive = X 1.0
Fire X 1.75

Multiplied last, after everything else has been considered

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#13

That… Is pretty huge, isnt it. .75 more than even Reaper? Damn.

#14

Matching elements is a big part of the game, especially at UVHM :slight_smile:

“Neutral” elements, like Non-elemental, shock and explosive have the advantage of being versatile (they don’t suck on anything) but they are not as powerful as matched fire and corrosive

#15

Match elements and aim for crits. I rarely bother with a shock gun. I may toss a Quasar to group and rip shields, but I use fire, corrosive, or Jakobs pretty much all of the time with Axton and Maya.

#16

Guys this is why I built the calc

You can include all skills gear, elemental damage, dps, etc…

Plug in the guns you want to know on Maya and action and the last tab is a comparison

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#17

Thank you everyone! Are there any kickass weapons that benefit from both grenade damage AND rock with the Bee, other than the DPUH and Ogre? I’m more looking for elemental weapons. That way Axton can get the elemental advantage as well, if possible.

#18

Click on my name, there should be a link on my card to the “splash damage guide”

Edit: there you go

…And while you’re there, look at about the 20th post, @Wingsday broke down which guns among these benefit from Axton’s grenade damage boosts

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#19

Thank you! It’s unfortunate that there arent many good guns with grenade splash AND elemental :frowning: Would using a Bee be better with Axton’s boosts in the end? Ugh, but then there’s CK to consider… and ii’d be using an explosive relic on Axton and a Corrosive Bone on Maya. All i want is for Axton’s weapon damage boosts on explosive weapons to be better than Maya with elemental matches but i doubt that will happen, especially with CK in the mix. Maya seems SO much better, even with one-on-one fights. I wish the Avenger exoded upon contact like most Tediore reloads, it would be so much more effective to use.

#20

It seems to me like you are trying to decide between playing Axton or Maya based on numbers… and I think you’re making a mistake.

You should play both, see which one you ENJOY the most, and then crunch the numbers to see how you can get the most out of your choice.

Because when it comes down to it, they have pretty different playstyle, and you might not enjoy them equally

Number crunching is fine (it’s what I do here, so…) but ease and fun should come first IMO

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