Wasting 25 points in harmony to get to scorn and in general?

Borderlands 2 Maya the Siren
#1

Hey everyone, would like your thoughts on this… Basically I feel as though spending 25 points with “sweet release”, “restoration”, “elated”, “sustenance” and “life tap” is just a waste. I love scorn, but is it really necessary? With ruin and converge helping with crowd control and slagging, with a build with almost instant cooldown where you can repeat the process of those two skills with phaselock, harmony health skills don’t seem worth it. The health skills are overshadowed with a grog and a couple chain lighting throws, which almost instantly restores all health. Also you can just use that same grog for slagging, why not spend those 25 points elsewhere is the question? No way can those 5 skills at 25 points heal quicker then the grog and chain lightning. Maybe I’m missing something, please share…:slight_smile:

Also I know you don’t need all those health skills to open up scorn, I’m just saying in general, the health skills package in harmony of 25 points.

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#2

Take into calculation the fact that you have to switch to the Grog, and then throw the Chain Lightning. That takes timme too. But I agree… This is the fastest way to heal. But the thing you’re missing, is that as soon as you switch to the Grog, you basically give up your whole offense while you heal. The skills in Harmony will allow you to heal while being on the offense. And as the old saying goes: “The best defense, is a good offense!”

Here’s a pretty standard build, but I left off at level 47. Leaving 25 points that you feel could be of better use somewhere else. If you’re doing a Thoughtlock build, then you have to give up most of the Harmony tree anyway, because few people will give up skills like Ruin, Reaper, Chain reaction and Cloud Kill.

But if you’re NOT doing a Thoughtlock build… Where would these 25 points find better use? I don’t see it! You don’t have to go all the way down to Scorn in Harmony, but those other skills sure come in handy from time to time. And if you play with friends… They’ll prolly demand that you be there with your healing skills to administer band aids all day long! :wink:

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#3

Per the Maya Peak tactics thread, I’ve obviously logged a lot of time on Maya with and without those points in Harmony. My staples there are the usual: 5/5 Sweet Release, 5/5 Wreck. When I stop at that and go heavy in motion, I generally get the extra healing from Grog or Rubi + Quasar*1.

I’ll tag @Derch in on this to get his input, because he consistently presents his side well, but I have a minor difference of opinion than him on some small stuff, despite generally being of the opinion that variations of his Twisted Pimp are the best all around builds that I’ve seen so far.

The difference: he has made some passing remarks about a healing or slag weapon being a wasted weapon slot for Maya (perhaps only intending that to link to a Scorn + Ruin build?). I may be misremembering, but I think he has also said that running a ‘get up gun’ or launcher is a waste. My take is this: you can run Maya with empty gun slots and be fine. BeeHawk + 1, Bekah alone, shock Pimp alone, Lady Fist… Cloudkill + corrosive Bone means not even having to swap the Bone out against flesh. So, my general thinking has been, mid-long range gun that plays with Chain Reaction, and an up close gun. A lot of the time, I don’t even bother with the up close gun. So, I have 2-3 ‘open’ slots, and I might as well keep one for quick healing in case of emergency. Strategically, that Grog or Rubi also let me hold PL or Scorn when I’m doing something like picking off a last enemy in a wave at the Peak, so I can lead with those as the next wave comes in. Common? Meh. But, why not? I don’t need a get up gun, or 4 guns for killing.

So… If I’m holding a Grog or Rubi, why do I STILL say variations of his build are the best all around takes that I’ve seen?

First, here’s what I’ve landed on recently:
http://bl2skills.com/siren.html#415001400055050005513505510511

With a Legendary Siren, that’s 10/5 Mind’s Eye for +50% critical hit damage. With the Bekah, Hammer Buster, Lyuda, or Lady Fist, that helps turn her gun damage into a jackhammer. It tears up the Scorches, Queens, Doc Mercy, constructors, etc.

5/5 Wreck, duh.

Healing skills: Sweet Release, Sustenance, Life Tap, while holding a Grog? There is a very simple reason: Time. If I’ve just killed an enemy with a Bekah, Sweet Release may be on its way, and 5/5 Life Tap means that my Bekah just became a healing tool. At 6% or so of that gun’s damage, I don’t need to swap to a Grog or Rubi, which would heal faster, but slow my killing pace. Instead, I just keep killing, and my skills take care of the health.

If you pause to heal too often, you’ll often find that you wind up pressed, and stuck on the defensive. Those skills allow you to stay on the killing guns, so you’re removing the need for future healing as quickly as possible.

A counterpoint would be Hawk or Harold, swapping to Moxxi before the pellets hit, then back again to keep shooting, but even that is slower than “keep shooting!”

Anyway, that’s just my take. Maya can be run many different ways.

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#4

good point, but you only lose your offensive for a couple seconds, the way I play is from range, lots of cover, I never go bumrushing enemies :slight_smile: lol!. If i lose my offence for a couple seconds, usually its cool. I don’t take much damage with maya, but sometimes bullets and rockets come from nowhere at range lol! I just really love the motion tree, and going down harmony, you have nothing left, because cataclysm is a tree you cant leave :). I wouldn’t say anything to derch unless he himself comments, learnt my lesson a few days ago.

#5

Thankyou for your input handsome :wink:

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#6

When I first played Maya I actually started with her Harmony tree (even though I play solo) and used Scorn for a while but soon dropped it as I found myself accidentally setting off Scorn while trying to open containers- and slagging yourself just makes it that much easier for the bad guys to kill you…:grinning: I’m currently using a slight variation of Derch’s Twisted Pimp build on my original Maya (the new Maya is running a Thoughtlock build…). I’m going to take a look at all my VH’s and write down their current builds just to make it easier for conversations like this…

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#7

Maya can be surprisingly tanky with a good Harmony build, especially Life Tap. I’ve tanked my way through a Rift Thresher’s singularity phase without a shield, killing/dealing damage to other enemies. It’s not as easy as healing with the click of a button as with the Grog/Chain Lightning combo, but it’s generally good enough (you do need a kill up though). It only costs a couple of dollars to re-spec - give it a spin and see if you like it.

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#8

Life Tap a waste? What?? It’s a superb skill. As @Adabiviak says, it really turns Maya into a tank. Harmony is a really powerful skill tree. It lets me dive into op8 mobs with no red text gear (so no Moxxi weapons) and survive without going into ffyl. Get a kill and Life Tap (especially with 5 points in Blight Phoenix) can refill your health pretty much instantly. The skills I’ve found most powerful:

Sweet Release
Mind’s Eye
Wreck
Elated
Life Tap
Scorn

Harmony often seems to be rather neglected but I’ve found it formidable.

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#9

If you’re not going to get thoughtlock, the bottom half of the motion tree isn’t really all that great either, so you may as well go with Harmony in that case. The tankiness it provides is not dependent on phaselock, and in a way it gives you more effective combat healing since you don’t have to stop DPSing to heal.

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#10

You’ve played with me a fair bit so you know I normally don’t do Scorn, preferring a Binder/Subsequence setup. However, there’s a lot to like in Harmony. Sweet Release is a critical skill to me and my main source of healing if I don’t want to be tied to the grog or transfusion grenades (which I don’t, as I feel like the grog is raid boss gimmick and I prefer the magic missiles). Wreck is essential, Res is the strongest co-op skill in the game outside of phaselock itself IMHO… I love Sustenance even though it’s not a decider, which is why I toss my leftover point into it in my normal build. I always want to be regen’ing health. Life Tap is useful as Derch and many others have shown. I would go into it if I had the points. The biggest plus for Scorn IMHO is that you can use it in FFYL, negating the need to swap to a slag weapon as part of getting a 2nd wind.

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#11

All the no and more no.

You are not wasting skill points to get to scorn. If you think any point other than damage are a waste I give you this

But I’ll get much more into it than just posing a video. Even if you think that Mind’s Eye and Wreck are two solid DPS skills so 10 points well spend. I think everyone agrees that res is worth the point. So 11 points. Now you are "wasting 14 points to get scorn.

So you have 4 gun slots and 1 grenade slot. You are going to use both of them for healing, that is “wasting” 40% of your weapon slots.

You have 68 skill points, so 14 of them would be 20% of your skill points.

I would rather put 20% to healing from skills than 40% from weapons.

Also as other mentioned if you have to swap to heal, then you are loosing DPS. So using the grog lowers your DPS, while using skill points to heal increases your DPS since you can keep in the fight.

Alot of the game doesn’t give you this option. Sometimes you have to be in the middle of it and if you rely on the grog/chain you can get overwhelmed and have to keep throwing grenades but you don’t kill enough and you get over run. I’ve seen this so many times. Or you run out of grenades and you are screwed.

Also the grog many times won’t help you on dots very well compared to maya’s passive healing skills. So its not even better than them.

To me this is the best argument agaisn’t not doing much in harmony because @ChemicalConundrum is right, SS and SR is usually enough and of course if you go SS you want Ruin and that doesn’t leave the option for scorn.

You can’t do this with a grog and no harmony skills




Trying to do that with a grog you would die so fast.

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#12

Thank you derch for the info, hee hee ;), gonna watch these videos asap. The blockade one I don’t need to, its the only shield I use now thanks to chemical :slight_smile: and playing with it beastly, of course bee does come on for the bosses :frowning:

#13

Yer chem, I know, you and your binder ;). I’ve stopped using the cat com, even though I still play my smgs with maya, I like the siren com a little more now. I was experimenting with the harmony tree, don’t get me wrong its lovely, tanky and relaxing, its just I really like quicken and subsequence, and of course points are limited :frowning:

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#14

Thank you all for your input :slight_smile:

#15

The harnony-tree seems underrated by a lot of people, especially those that primarly play from long-range. That’s on the playstyles these players have, not on the skill tree.

The harnony-tree profits from an aggressive playstyle, so sweet release and Life Tap can heal you more. Life Tap heals for 6% of the damage done at 5/5 and for 12% (Rubi-Level) at 10/5 and you can do way higher damage (i.e. more healing) by using a strong gun. At OP8, you can get along with 2 Points in Life Tap and will be fine, cause the damage your healing bases off grows bigger in comparison to your health.

And what damage do you potentially loose? As good as none! Mayas damage buffs either come from the Harmony-tree (Wreck, Minds Eye) or skills you could get without having to loose any Points for Harmony (Chain Reaction). The only thing you loose are two playstyles of Maya, the Thoughlock-strategy and the - if you want to Call it that - sub-sequence/ruin-strategy.

One thing, most people don’t even think about is the flow of the Battle and dps-up- & downtimes. Think about it this way: You have a build without Scorn and while your Phaselock is up, you have great dps and crowd-control. But in those 5 seconds that Phaselock is on cooldown, your offense shrinks to slag-n-swap, throwing Quasars and stopping every few enemies to Slag them with your Grog.

But, if you had Scorn, you could use grenades for damage-purposes only, Finish off the survivors of your PL, throw Scorn to Slag a lot of your enemies and just push through with one weapon that heals you through Life Tap. And before the last enemy dies, your Phaselock will be up again.

In short: a harmony-build has far less dps-downtimes and plays more fluid as the more PL-burst-damage-like Thoughtlock-Ruin-builds.

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#16

The title was a ? I’m not saying it is a waste, that’s why the ? :slight_smile:

#17

Spot on narf, I’m one of those long range players, it could be because of that I was considering leaving harmony.

#18

If you said in your OP that you are using SS then its one thing but to not use them because of the grog is another.

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#19

My apologise derch, yes I realize its 2 different issues. However it is actually for both reasons, not just one, my bad, should have clarified that.

#20

I don’t really agree with that, most of this game takes places at close and mid range. This is the reason so many don’t like the godfinger.

At long range though, the best com is the Legendary Siren, its her sniper com. With that you don’t need quicken, the com and bone is more than enough cooldown.

the way SS works its more of a mid range play style if you really want to get the bubble moving, fgambler showed this well with his lady of the chornoshpere build