Community Patch: Krieg edition

Borderlands 2 Krieg the Psycho
#1

This is an extension of the community patch thread focusing on Krieg’s skills. Since I’m not a big fan on his Hellborn skills, I’ll ping @xmngr for some feedback.

#SKILLS

##BLOODLUST

Bloody Revival
Have this skill apply to all weapons while in FFYL instead of just assault rifles.

Blood Overdrive
This always seemed like a wasted skill to me. Instead of giving melee damage, make it explosive damage instead.

#MANIA

Pull the Pin
Double, or even triple, the grenade damage. This skill is pretty lackluster even when leveling and has no real use after you’ve reached the cap.

Light the Fuse
Oh boy. This skill needs some serious love because it suffers from poor scaling. Increase the damage, increase the scaling, or do both. In TVHM, this skill really suffers and needs to built around in UVHM to actually do damage. It’s a fun skill, so I hate to see it languish so.

Strip the Flesh
Make this skill multiplicative instead of additive and increase the base damage by 5-15%; the bonus won’t need to be touched with the increased damage.

Salt the Wound
Have the stacks decay slower - say 5 seconds. I love this skill, but you almost have to be under constant assault to see any benefit from it. Also, change it from additive to multiplicative if it isn’t already.

Hellborn

Hellfire Halitosis
Oh, where to start? Like LTF, this skill suffers from terrible scaling, but its base damage is pathetic. Increase the scaling and the damage.

Elemental Empathy
Change it so any DoT will heal Krieg and not just fire.

#COMs

I need to review his COMs again to make suggestions, but will welcome any and all provided they’re feasible.

2 Likes
Unofficial Community Patch Thread
#2

Bloodlust:

Bloody Revival - agreed. I don’t think he has much boosts to assault rifles beyond this so this needs expanding to all weapons.

Blood Overdrive - I usually play Melee Krieg so I’m happy with melee buffs and it’s not like he needs extra explosive power once you get Bloodsplosion up and running. Grenade fuse? It saves farming for low fuse singularities I guess!

No other comments on the tree!

Mania:

Pull the Pin is an amusing skill while levelling, more useful in co-op as the dropped grenade can help out other players still taking shots at a Badass. Fun but can be specced out of at end game.

Light the Fuse: Works fine in NVHM and UVHM but doesn’t scale properly in TVHM which is annoying. Doesn’t really need much in the way of a damage buff but it does take skills/balls to rely on it!

Strip The Flesh - that sounds reasonable but when combined with Bloodsplosion the last thing Krieg needs is more power!

Salt the Wound - I generally only spec into this to advance towards RtB and whilst it’s bonus it nice you just don’t have enough time firing a shotgun to get huge benefits from it imo. Could possibly be used in some way to provide slag? Probably WAY outside the parameters of the patch though! (Thinking rack up 20 stacks auto slags last enemy to hit you subject to being slaggable!)

Hellborn:

Hellfire Halitosis - As you say needs a boost to be effective in anything other than normal. Could also be a source of slag if specced into delusional damage perhaps?

Elemental Empathy - I’m sure this already heals on any element assuming you have delusional damage. Will need to double check now though! Shock damage certainly healed me the other day!

Flame Flare - this one was bugged once and I’m sure it still kills me more than it aids me. Not sure what changes I’d want but there needs to be some way to stop being on fire after combat - a fairly common complaint with most characters though I understand!

No real thoughts on other skills or the COM’s though!

#3

He heals with corrosive DoT also.

In overall, I would buff LtF and Hellfire Halitosis.

1 Like
#4

Hell, that would make Melee Krieg even more broken.

Light the Fuse needs a buff, clearly. This is one of my favourite skills and it completely sucks :confused:

#5

The only skills I believe need tinkering…

Bloodlust Tree:

Bloody Revival should be with all weapons except rocket launchers.

Mania Tree:

Pull the Pin should double the damage of the grenade dropped in addition to already doubling the xp. When psychos pulled out a grenade in Borderlands 1 that thing was absurdly powerful. Another option, if trying to make it more permanently useful, would be to simply drop a free grenade when you enter FFYL.

The biggest one of all: Embrace the Pain’s effects should apply during Buzz Axe Rampage. Most importantly to increase the rate of thrown axes.

Light the Fuse needs to be fixed so that it remains useful in all difficulties.

Hellborn:

Hellfire Halitosis needs to scale better so there is a reason to take it.

1 Like
#6

@bryanswpaulsen you spoke the truth.

#7

Krieg already has a ton of damage. Blood Bath, Salt the Wound and Elemental Elation are some of the strongest individual damage skills in the game. Making skills like Strip the Flesh and Salt the Wound multiplicative would kinda be overkill.

I feel that the following skills could benefit from a buff though:

Bloody Revival: I agree this should apply to all weapon types.

Pull the Pin: Increases Experience gained by 500%. Obviously this is a levelling skill, but 2 times experience is just too tame. Maybe buff the free grenade’s damage by 100% too.

Salt the Wound: Decrease stack decay rate by ALOT. The damage from this skill to Shotguns is really good but stacks just decay too easily. Increase Melee damage bonus to 3% per stack per level.

Light the Fuse: Needs a 200% buff at least to be viable at OP levels.

Burn Baby Burn: Allow this damage to apply to all DOT types. A large part of why Krieg is less effective in Loader maps if because 1) RR and HH are fire only 2) BBB only applies to Burn dots. If BBB applied to Corrode damage as well, it would synergise nicely with Elemental Empathy in Loader Maps.

Otherwise, Krieg’s other skills are quite solid. That said I do feel that some of his COMs could have some improvement.

Legendary Reaper: Replace Blood Overdrive with either Embrace the Pain or Pain is Power. COM is built around Bloodbath but kinda lacks in Passive Damage.

Slayer of Terramorphous: Shadow did an awesome job with the SoT Coms but I think Krieg’s one would benefit from some tweaking. The passives of the SoT (Burn Dmg and Max Health) just scream Krieg and its a pity the skills it buff don’t synergise. Perhaps this will work nicely:
+4 Nervous Blood
+4 Thrill of the Kill
+4 Elemental Empathy
+4 Burn Baby Burn
+4 Salt the Wound/Pain is Power

Could be a little OP, but it would be nice to have its own place amongst the Leg. Torch and Reaper. Also fits in line with the survivability focus of Shadow’s SoT modifications.

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#8

I’m gonna throw these on here with the disclaimer that I know very little about the patch. I’ve been in my yearly run at Hat Fortress (TF2).

Blood Twitch : Krieg has to many bonuses tied to kill skills. If I could choose one kill-skill to switch to non-kill-skill, this would be my choice. Reduce the bonus to something like .075 to .15 from .3 per stack and change it to a non-kill-skill.

Bloody Revival : Happy to fall in line with @bryanswpaulsen on this one. Bonus applied to all weapons except launchers.

Blood Overdrive : This is the one out of all of them that I really want. Half or remove the melee bonus. Add a movement speed bonus! +.5% per stack sound reasonable?

Boiling Blood : Up this to at least one second per rank.

Lite the Fuse : In the old days, this would have been my main concern. I’ve sense adapted well enough to play without it, but I’d love to get this back (before I didn’t play Krieg at OP8 just because no LtF. Now I do play at OP8 and just live without it.) This scaled properly in TVHM and the OP levels would make me very happy indeed!

Burn, Baby, Burn : I’d like to see the base bonus applied to all DOT damage, but I think the on fire bonus to burn damage should remain just a bonus to burn damage (give a nice buff, but it’s the Hellborn tree…Krieg does better with fire). You could maybe adjust the bonuses though. Like make the base buff 10% and the on fire bonus 12%

Flame Flare : I’m not suggesting a change here, just offering a piece of information. People miss the fact that this skill increases the duration of all burn DOTs applied to you, not just your self DOT. So if you catch a burn DOT from an enemy, this skill will increase it’s duration (occasionally nasty, but I think it’s a fair trade off).

Hellfire Halitosis : I don’t think this is possible, but I’d like to see this skill totally changed. Call it Rancid Regurgitation. Melee Override where Krieg vomits out a stream of corrosive slag.

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#9

I think there is inherent flaw in the Krieg skill tree that is, to some extent, behind this discussion. I say this because the best build I have found to solo survive Digi Peak and other tougher areas is with a Hellborn/Bloodsplosion build…which means I NEVER go into buzz axe rampage (unless I hit the button by mistake). Would you ever have a Maya build that never uses Phaselock, a Zero that never uses Deception or an Axton that never deploys his turrets? Probably not.

And yes, I have all of the “best” at-level melee gear…rough rider, slag ravager, legendary sickle com, storm front/quasars, relic with 60% health bonus and have played melee Krieg for many months trying to make it work.

#10

Unfortunately what you’re asking for is beyond the ability of any patches we make because all we can do currently is tweak numbers.

#11

Understood.

So perhaps make Krieg’s buzz axe rampage shorter so I can get back to slagging, using grenades, and in general being able to defend myself (instead of hitting myself)?

Speaking of which, get rid of the “hitting yourself” chance with Silence the Voices? Makes the game not fun when you cannot defend yourself. Maya does not have a 12% chance to Phaselock herself, Axton’s turret’s don’t have a 12% chance to shoot him instead of the enemy, etc.

#12

In one way, that’s the beauty of Krieg : the ridiculous variety in ways to play him. Hellborn builds basically eschew his action skill. Grousing about omitting his action skill is similar to the Maya thread where someone was grousing about her lack of raiding skills.

Each character is to be played differently - even vastly differently. This is why we can log thousands of hours and not get sick of the game. I don’t think every character should be equally adept at mobbing, raiding and Peak-ing.

That said , I agree Krieg is a b*tch to play on the Peak and I quit at OP7.

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#13

Grousing about omitting his action skill is similar to the Maya thread where someone was grousing about her lack of raiding skills

Not sure I was grousing…it was more of a harrumph.

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#14

One thing I am curious about is if it’s possible to let LtF be registered as explosive melee damage, so that LtF gets the bonuses of his melee Skills as well. Same applies to Bloody Revival. Could it be tweaked into 1% per bloodlust-stack (at 5/5) for explosive weapons/damage? 1,5% would a be too much considering that some of the already strongest weapons in the game are explosive.

By doing all that Bloody Revival and Light the Fuse would even synergise with each other.

#15

Krieg was designed as the “bad guy” to begin with, and each of his trees fit a dif type of bandit:
Bloodlust: Marauder with rifle gamestyle
Hellborn: Pyro Lunatic / Flamelauncher dudes
Mania: Badass Psycho Mutant.

So yes, you can go Hellborn without BXR (but i personnaly love melee igniting enemies lol).
Bloodlust is heavily oriented as a support to his action skill (Taste of Blood, Fuel the Blood, Blood Trance and Boiling Blood).
As for Mania, it is by definition the tree which makes him a monster at melee with risks for it.

Yes, Krieg self-hits himself when meleeing with Silence the Voices, but it is a skill which allows you to one-hit split in half most mobs in the game, and bosses in a couple more swings, so YES it needs drawbacks!

Apart from that, Krieg is what he is. A pscho. No crouching behind cover, no shield skills, no Axton vibes.
As an overall opinion, i think everyone needs to keep the idea of balance to skill trees and characters. The patches and hard work are not here to overpower all characters lmao.

Each char has its playstyle so it’s not like we should flatten them all to “dps boost, shield boost, hp boost”.

Also awesome work to Mr. Lord of Patches hands down :grin:

1 Like
#16

It’s not a flaw to be able to build a character around using the action skill as little as possible. My two favorite characters in the franchise both shared this feature on top of being tanks that used explosive weapons.

Did it with Brick in Borderlands, very effectively so as a Tank-Blaster. He was an outstanding tank that had no problem with gun damage, so he rarely needed to use his action skill for emergency healing. Given he put away his gun to heal the action skill had a drawback, and that made it interesting in its own way.

Did it with Claptrap in TPS. His action skill was the equivalent of rolling dice, definitely a drawback, so Boomtrap-I Love You Guys! made for a build where the action skill was only ever used as an emergency heal.

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#17

Yep. Mania is definitely a risk vs. reward tree. It might be possible to remove the percentage of hitting yourself while using StV, but I wouldn’t add it to the patch. It could probably be made as an option for those who want it though; I’m not overly familiar with what we can do yet because I haven’t had an opportunity to look at the code.

#18

I agree to most of your suggestions
Especially Blood Twitch
At 5/5
When its not active you really feel the need for a swap speed skill
When it is active…its overkill
Changing it to 75% and making it a passive would be awesome

Id say dont remove the melee bonus(just halve it) on Blood Overdrive since
His 3 killskils do have a ‘trinity’ thing going
And it is fun to play that way rotating between all 3

Light the fuse I definitely want a buff to
Its such a fun skill

As for flame flare… Maybe add a bit of fire damage resistance(cus I dont think theres burn damage resistance)?

Also Elemental Empathy already heals for all DoTs

#19

I don’t know if this is a good idea, but Blood Overdrive (it could be something else in the Bloodlust tree) could increase Krieg’s max ammo count for all weapons, or add ammo regeneration depending on Bloodlust Stacks. That would give him lots of synergy with all of his Fire Rate and Mag Size boosts (since one of Krieg’s biggest problems is ammo).

What do you guys think ?

#20

I’ve never had a ammo problem on Krieg because I get lots of kills using Bloodsplosion, melee/axe throws, or the fire balls from the capstone skill on the hellborn tree (name escapes me).