Discovering Zero: Edgepixel's gunner playthrough

Borderlands 2 Zer0 the Assassin
#1

I’m the kind of person that tries to bother people as little as possible, so I had reservations about adding yet another possibly redundant thread, but it’s been suggested to me that I should start my own thread if I struggle with my build/need advice, so here it goes.

LEVEL 27 SNIPER/GUNNER ZERO >> Link <<

It’s the first character I played, as it seemed the most fun. Didn’t read much about it online then, I just played and put points where it made sense. It’s been fun, but I struggled in a few places, most atrociously in Caustic Caverns; after endless deaths and cursing, I put my beloved sniper rifles aside, and pushed past it with rocket launchers, grenades and beefy shotguns.

I’ve read more since, and reallocated my points (see above). They were all previously into the Sniping tree. I moved the points from Kill Confirmed and Velocity into Fast Hands and Ambush. I also stopped neglecting Deception :). It improved my game; now I can handle everything without dying.

ISSUES

  1. HARD ENEMIES. The points in which the game swarms you with very powerful enemies still give me more trouble than I suspect it should if I knew how to handle it better (some synergies and tactics I’m probably not getting). I manage, but it can wear me out. Recently in Lynchwood, after all the Armored Skags, Lab Rats and all the assorted FFYLs, it stopped being fun. I started a new game with Maya, as a diversion :).

  2. ITEMS. I still feel like fumbling in the dark regarding grenades and shields. So many options, and I have no clear idea which ones would benefit my build more. I carry unnecessary stuff with me for backup: a few shields, a few grenade mods (single, splitting, slag, shock, absorption), etc, because it’s not entirely clear which one to keep and what to ditch. It can also happen with weapons. For example, I carried three sniper rifles with shock damage at some point because they were all significantly different, making a selection difficult. And 2 corrosives. Oh, and yeah, I’m usually a hoarder in games, where if manageable, I grab/sell everything. I’d like more clarity/simplicity in this area.

  3. SKILLS. I wonder if I should move the points from Killer to Precision. I mean it’s useful, when you can keep it active. If it’s off most of the time, didn’t I waste 5 points? And I resort to shotguns anyway, to middle-close-kill various nasties.

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#2

personally when i comes to grenades i like to run Tesla’s which are the shock grenades made by vladof, making sure to avoid rubberised as it is the worst mod for them ever, and trying to go for as short a delay as possible, you tend to find loads under 1 second, i like them for stripping shields of multiple enemies and for having an AoE so enemies can even just run in the area

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#3

I’ll start with your skills as I have limited time :

No way - Killer is vastly better, even as a kill skill.

Otherwise, take the point from OSOK and put it into Death Mark. Then put all your new points into Unf0rseen or Rising Sh0t, Innervate (!!), Two Fang, and Death Bl0ss0m (!!).

Only then work on the other trees. The skills with (!!) are far more important than OSOK.

Regarding Unforseen vs Rising Shot, it’s a matter of play-style. I like the former : round up punks with a singularity grenade, throw the decoy into the middle, line up a B0re shot and blast 'em with a shotgun. Unforseen does a lot of damage. If you’re more of a range player, take Rising Shot.

For grenades, singularites and transfusions do it for me. Shock for the former and shock or slag for the latter.

Shields : at the moment, whatever has the best balance of capacity, delay and recharge. You’re not at the level where you have to be thinking about specifics. Absorbs for bullet areas and Adaptives for beasties are generally reliable ; but boosters, novae and spikes are fun to use.

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#4

Killing Blow is hard to pass up whether your using a melee, sniper or gun builds.

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#5

With regards to getting swarmed your best bet is to back out a bit and restore distance. Zero lacks the skills to play tank, his strength is in staying mobile. Before starting engagements scan the area and see where your panic escape route is and also escape routes. In Lynchwood for example on the way to the sheriff the path does a minor zig zag, with smart movement you can block line of site to the slower enemies such as bruisers and eliminate the rushers.

A mental trick that really helped me with Zero is to forget about the offensive bonuses of Deception, too often in a rash attempt to take advantage of the damage bonus I would fire off a shot while standing in the open, I would then promptly die. Change tack with deception and use it for escaping and moving to advantageous spots. Damage is not your problem with Zero, in fact it should be the first thing you sacrifice in favour of safety. If you think you’re going down don’t expose yourself for an extra second to kill the strong guy, hide, worst case scenario you go down and then you turn around and finish the guy off.

Rats are annoying critters, if you’re aim is a problem then try a fast fire rate weapon. They may be quick but they have small health pools so fast fire rate weapons and grenades are very effective. The bigger mutated rats are super slow, so turn around and run for a bit then fire at them and repeat. Armoured Skags are tough, luckily though they are exclusive to lynchwood so you don’t fight them again. I should also add that Lynchwood is considered to be one of the toughest maps in the base game. The sheer volume of bandits is difficult and as such is a favourite litmus test for builds. So don’t beat yourself up for struggling in Lynchwood, we all struggle there.

This is a community created tip thread for keeping Zero alive, scan through it and see what you can incorporate into your game.

With regards to items I personally always carry either a singularity or transfusion grenade. For Singularity grenades I prioritize the fuse time and delivery method, damage is irrelevant as I use it to create space for myself and not to kill stuff. With transfusions I try to keep it as close to my level as possible and I throw them liberally to keep myself alive. With shields I am flexible. My personal favourites are adaptives and absorb shields, but I rate turtle shields really highly too. Don’t be afraid of the health penalty of a turtle shield, remember you don’t have a reliable health regen method but shields will always recharge given time.

My rule of thumb with weapons is that if I have a use case then I keep it regardless of whether it is always equipped or not. Money is pretty much only useful for buying ammo so don’t feel that you must sell everything to gain cash. My Zero carries 5 snipers in his backpack that share 2 equip slots. So from one hoarder to another, don’t worry it isn’t a problem. But if you want more simplicity try to firstly keep only one of each element, then work out which brands you actually like and only keep the snipers made by those brands. If you can’t decide between say 2 fire snipers then equip them both go to a gunfight and see which one you do better with and ditch other.

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#6

amazing work prismatic

#7

No. Killer is way more important. I might sound like a broken record to some of the people frequenting these forums but I’ll make the same suggestion that I’m usually offering others: start with the middle tree until you get Death blossom and go for the other trees after that. You don’t need the damage buffs from the sniping tree at this point and the middle tree has amazing stuff that works with everything. Every single Zer0 wants fast hands, ambush, innervate, death mark and death blossom.

Unforeseen kills stuff on normal mode really well so you might look into that. When you can throw your decoy in melee range of someone and consider them already dead. The only problem with this is trying not to get too comfortable with it since it won’t be so effective on UVHM. Once you get death blossom they will kill enemies by themselves really efficiently through TVHM and be a major damage gain on UVHM.

Some enemies just are kind of painful. Lab rats are almost impossible to reliably crit but they are really slow so just keep backing up. Getting a fire weapon can make shot work of them even with their higher health pool. Skagriders are really annoying for Zer0 but only seen in one place that you only need to visit once per playthrough for quests. A powerful corrosive weapon helps. I honestly just ignore them and run past them while hitting quest objectives for the bank and bane. Use deception and leave them in the dust. Not worth the trouble :slight_smile:
Also, on NVHM and TVHM Unforeseen owns both.

Most people favor Transfusions because Zer0 has little survivability skills. Singularities are also popular. Melee will pick Stormfront or Chain lightning but a Zer0 with a Moxxi gun might also pick them up for some mad healing power. Magic missile isn’t unheard of to just add a slagging tool in that slot. Grenade is not too important until UVHM. Anything will work for now so just pick something you are comfortable using and go to town. For me it’s anything with lobbed or longbow delivery and short fuse.

Shield I mostly pick the highest capacity as long as the delay and rate aren’t abysmal on it. Once again however, it’s not too important at those levels. Any kind of shield can be good. I prefer to stay away from spikes and boosters because the first ones utility is so rare and the second I don’t like because of manual pick ups but that’s just me.

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