Removed in response to Gearbox decision of Epic Store exclusivity

Borderlands 2 Fan Creations
#1

Neither this nor any of my guides will be restored.

6 Likes
#2

Good job. I’m always surprised that people would go so far as to add literally a games worth of dialog to their character. If you’d like some thorough criticism, then I’d be happy to, but no pressure.

4 Likes
#3

I don’t mind. I have been spelling checking it on and off. Posting here allows others to tinker with it as well and give their two cents as they see things that I overlooked.

4 Likes
#4

Troubled seems to be inherently passive as a playable character. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I find that the power growth of the character, the enjoyability of the character, and the memorability of the character increases the more interactive they are.

  • From the instant he unlocks it, it seems that Troubled’s action skill can theoretically always be active, especially with the middle skill tree. (Granted, it has a massively long cooldown of 90 seconds)
  • He only has one kill skill, and the rest of his skills tend to just “give” their effects to him by him simply being in normal combat.
    • This is largely prevalent in his survivability skills, but more on that later.
  • After equipping Jakobs weapons, all he seems to need to do is “focus” Artemis on an enemy. But based on the wording, she can focus an enemy on her own?

This seems like a massively missed opportunity to make some really cool skills and synergies. I was really expecting a melee duo skill tree when I read this.

I know it’s their moto, but this skill doesn’t seem to synergize with the upper half of this skill tree. “Who need’s recoil reduction and recovery when it takes one shot?” The accuracy is kind wasted on what I’d assume is the more preffered one shot machines, snipers.

  • Not to mention that this is a “throw away” skill outside of mobbing, but that isn’t necessarily bad.

This skill seems lackluster even if you’re using a Jakobs weapon. A 10-20% gun damage bonus that can’t even be used on all the enemies in the game seems like a bad tier 4 skill.

Have you played BL1 before? Because these are similar mechanics in that game, so I was just curious.

I will say that if Mule Kick doesn’t have a stagger along with it, then it can be a very annoying mechanic. While it is fun in BL1 to one shot enemies and see their corpse go flying, it can make it very infuriating to shoot a ranged enemy further from you, especially in FFYL.

Really ■■■■■■■ powerful. My own personal bias just wishes it was more cognitively demanding to achieve.

I get the point and the reference, but overly limiting a player’s diversity in gear choice is never really a good thing. (Not to mention it takes away from “…you weren’t using a Jakobs!”)

Maybe something such as “Troubled converts his current shield capacity to health, sacrificing the special effect of the shield. Artemis gains a health increase based on the percentage health increase this provided Troubled.”

I assume that this is only while Artemis is active, but 10% is still a lot to just have passively active while your action skill is up. And it’s for both of you, though the aggro draw/damage share from Artemis may counter this somewhat.

A very interesting skill, where no matter how big the damage source was, it will be spread out over the course of 10 seconds. Plus some damage reduction.

But the problem is that the damage can stack, and health gating is a powerful mechanic that all characters have access to, and this skill basically throws that mechanic out the window.

  • It’s like, have you ever been health gated while you have a DoT on you? It almost ignores the immunity frames entirely and puts you into FFYL. Now you have massive damage spikes such as Vora bites, RPG loaders, UBA fire threshers, etc… building up really powerful DoTs on you, damage reduction or not…
  • Plus I can see a lot of deaths happening after you have nothing else to second wind off of.

Not to be negative, but this is again a very “do nothing, get rewarded” kind of skill. Especially for it’s power, even if I assume it’s only while Artemis is up.

I don’t understand how this scales, and is this instant health regen or overtime? I also don’t see why I’d put more than one point in this skill, in fact to my understanding, it gets worse the more points you put into it.

How does this stack? And are all the skills on this tier 5 pointers?

I assume the 1% is static? It would help to include the maximum number of skill points that can be spent on a skill, and which numbers change based on point investment.

For how strong something like “Blood Fang” is, this skill seems needlessly capped for its comparatively lackluster potential.

So I’m going assume Artemis doesn’t lose her shield if you chose to unequip your’s for “Rough Rider”, and she still gets the health bonus?

A good skill, I just wanted to point out that it just adds to his passivity.

That seems like a very low percentage. I know that you guess he’d have ~7 million health, but with his skills a 5/5, I only saw a 150% increase. So that would put him at ~1.4 million health, and no adaptive shield to boost it further. Achieving 2.8 million damage or even 6 million at OP8 is child’s play.

By comparison my melee Krieg only has 3.5 million health. I’m mostly fine with the power of the skill, but I think you’re “low balling” you numbers a bit.

And Artemis disappears when you go into FFYL? You should probably make an editor’s note about that under the action skill, along with the fact she has a shield. Plus that is a hefty fine to pay on an action skill that has a 90 second cooldown.

  • And I didn’t see a way to decrease that.
  • Would something like a BotA increase her healing while not summoned?
    • And I’m confused on the wording. It seems like almost all of Troubled’s health regen requires Artemis to be out, but the action skill description makes it seem like it’s active for both of them even if she isn’t?
      • Either way, it either makes him very weak without Artemis (which action skill reliance isn’t a good thing unless you can almost guarantee it will always be up) or it seems to again add to his passivity.

Damn right! And Troubled too since he gets the health regen from Bloodfang.

Unless you want it has a balancing factor, I feel it would be better to let Troubled melee if Artemis was despawned or if GftT was on cooldown.

And this spawns more from the improvements made in TPS, but what raid killing power does Troubled have?

Besides the Bloodfang combo making him live forever, I don’t see anything that lets him do well in raids, except just banking on the power of 4Fot Apocalypse.

  • If Artemis was designed to be the raid killer, then that is kinda unfun and static IMO. I.E. Jack’s Promote the Ranks is powerful as hell, but it gets boring after a while, and you can always dynamically make the character better a killing then the action skill.

Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m just giving my decently bias and opinionated suggestions. In terms of Borderlands, I live and breath the playable characters, nothing else. Not the weapons, character interactions, comedy, art style, etc… gets me more fired up. My dream job is to literally design the action skills, skill trees, helices, ultimates, etc… of characters for Gearbox, so I’ve put a lot of time into trying to prefect it.

3 Likes
#5

Well you weren’t lying about giving in depth suggestive criticism, I’m going to have to sit down and write a proper response later, but as of now I just whipped the character up for funsies as as I said. I never expected it to be balanced in way shape or form nor did I try and balance it. It was just something I whipped up on the spot and figured ‘what the hell?’ I’ll throw it on the forums for good measure.

And like I said, even if I made it really good and balanced I would be extremely surprised if I got a response from Gearbox for it.

Edit: I am in the process of smoothing things out skill wise and doing replacements.

4 Likes
#6

I remedied this to an extent and gave them both more kill skills and made the skills have more synergy now.

Summon Artemis is similar to Salvador’s Gunzerk in that it can be used continuously. To compensate Troubled has to wait a long time–initially anyways–for her to recuperate. Taking skills in Tough as Nails though drastically reduces her cooldown due to all the healing. The reason his tanking tree is mostly passive is that I find it to be a poor choice to make tanking skills kill skills as evident by the state of Salvador’s Brawn tree.

She’ll go after the nearest enemy that gets her attention but ordering to focus on a target is similar to to Wilhelm’s Laser Guided skill. While she can target enemies on her own ordering her unlocks the other skills. I meant it as a way to give the player more control over her and allow them to make her focus on more dangerous enemies than simply bite whatever is closest.

I changed the cap skill in the Beast Master tree to reflect what you said.

I changed the skill after thinking about it. Hopefully the replacement skill better fits in the tree.

Fixed this by increasing the damage to 60% with Jakobs.

I renamed Magnesium rounds but Mule Kick I should have clarified better. At long range it merely makes enemies flinch as if they had taken too much damage. Up close though it causes them to fly backwards like what enemies did when blasted with a Jakobs shotgun.

I actually thought it was under-powered as far as cap skills are concerned.

I modified it to boost their base health as well as give a percentage increase. The reason for the removal of shields altogether is to give the player the ability to use the Rough Rider shield without having a shield. It’s a similar entrance skill as Gaige’s Anarchy though a lot more strict.

Funnily enough, my previously created character has a skill like that called Undertaker.

Yes, only while Artemis is active, and it is a one point skill. Sorry if I somehow made it look like it was a five point skill. So the skill only gives 2% healing.

While that is not a weakness I thought of I would rather keep it in as to put a cap on the character.

I meant it to be that way.

At 50% health both Artemis and Troubled have 5% health regeneration but as they heal they lose 1% health regeneration every 1% they heal. At 75% health they have 2.5% health regeneration from the skill while at 25% health they both have 7.5% health regeneration. The lower their health, the more powerful the healing. Think of it as Salvador’s Ain’t Got Time to Bleed but more potent.

I changed this skill to give both Artemis and Troubled shields, but it still behaves the same. At 100% health it gives nothing, but at 75% health both gain 25% of Artemis’ shields. At 50% they both get 50% of her shields at the max five points ant at 25% health they both gain 75% of her shields. Like every other skill in the tree Bulwark gets more powerful the less health both have and when combined with the damage reduction of Relentless it makes it harder and harder for enemies to break through that shield.

Artemis keeps her shield, I should probably write that down in the skill and yes she still gets the health bonus. The reason for that is because Artemis is naturally in the fight and the extra shield helps with keeping her alive, though with Bulwark both can go into the fight so long as they don’t suffer heavy splash damage. I was originally going to just have Artemis keep the shield only but after some thought I made it to where both receive the shield to give the skill more synergy with the changed Beast Master tree.

I modified it to where it only kicks in when he and Artemis are below 50% health.

I made it to where Rough Rider gives a static health boost as well that scales like what health COMs do in Borderlands 2. I should have realized that from the beginning.

I modified Last Stand to fix that to where she is still around to fight, though with much less health but still has access to all the healing abilities. The cooldown on the skill drops due to all the healing which is active whether or not Artemis is on the field or not, but Troubled does not split damage with Artemis until she is de-cloaked.

Yes, though she she still heals through all the passives quicker.

Nah, that is my fault, I should have worded it better. Most are active while she is out save for Bulwark. I’ll edit that in later and make some modifications.

Wish granted.

I’m having fun tinkering with this, so I am not taking it the wrong way.

3 Likes
#7

I’m just bored and needed something to do.

At least the shotgun and AR one seemed pretty powerful with all Jakobs.

  • Shotguns: 50% reduced ammo consumption, 50% damage, all ammo spent on death of the target is returned.
  • ARs: Fully automatic alone is really powerful, along with 100% damage.

You don’t have to change it, I was just pointing out why think it is strong.

Oh, you just phrased it like you couldn’t even have the RR equipped.

Then shouldn’t the .2% be .1%, or am I still reading this wrong?

^

2 Likes
#8

Yeah, you’re right, healing would be ridiculous at 1% per 1% hp lost. Changed to where it’s .1% per 1% by fixing the writing.

You wouldn’t be able to equip the RR, what I am saying is the skill gives you an RR without having it equipped. You trade shield benefits for having a ton of health, at least until you take Bulwark which gives you a shield.

The concept, at least what I am trying to do, is somewhat similar to how Mania Krieg can ignore RNG and go with very little gear.

2 Likes
#9

Sounds totally plausible to me! :smile:

I like everything about this AS! In fact… I like the whole idea of this character. Well done, Troubled! :acmaffirmative:

4 Likes
#10

I’ll preach and use Tediore for a month if it happens.

Artemis is the same ‘action skill’ as the main character has in a fanfiction I been plugging away at for the last year or so, so she has technically been around for a while.

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#11

Loving the idea of Troubled, I came up with a similar idea but I’ll be sure not to try and copy your ideas, besides, nonetheless, great concept

2 Likes