Blood Overdrive is hilariously bugged. (CONFIRMED!)

Borderlands 2 Krieg the Psycho
#1

EDIT: It IS bugged! Check out @peddroelm 's excellent analysis below for exact details! Blood Overdrive is hilariously bugged. (CONFIRMED!)

I was messing around on my Krieg today and found that Blood Overdrive didn’t seem to be boosting my melee damage as much as I expected. It’s supposed to give me 250% melee damage with 100 stacks of Bloodlust.

Here’s my melee damage without it active. (644K)

Here’s my melee damage with it active(you can see it on the hot bar). (783K)

My only other melee bonus is 70% from another skill(Empty The Rage). So my base melee damage should be 379K.

Blood Overdrive + Empty the Rage is 250% and 70%, so my total damage SHOULD be 379 x 4.2 = 1591K. Almost double what I actually get!

Has anyone else experienced this? 250% melee damage should definitely be giving me a pretty big bonus, I thought.

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#2

Are you using Krieg’s buzz axe or a bladed weapon? That makes a difference once you go above a certain character level (see this thread for more info)

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#3

I am just using the normal buzz axe, didn’t want to distort the results.

#4

Okay, I went back and tested it with both the buzz axe and a blade attachment. Neither one seems to be having any bonus from Blood Overdrive.

EDIT: Okay, for some reason one point has absolutely no effect. Five points takes me from 500k to 674k against a bullymong, with no other active bonuses whatsoever.

#5

Krieg’s base melee damage at lvl 65
20 * 1.13^65 * 0.8* (1 + 0.02 * 65) = 103740.095892

Test hit

# Melee Damage Done By Player; Player's Melee Additive(sum) Damage Multiplier = 1.00668;  
# Damage Type = NON-ELEMENTAL ; ElementalMul = 1.00000; ( GrenadeMul = 1.14080 ); address =   3937E018 
# vsHealthorArmorMul 1.00; Intermediary Damage Value 208173.59375  
     872766   982288.750 Max    774115.125 Cur   982288.750 Prev   208173.625 Damage   422F0298 baseaddress           Monglet vsHealthOrArmor         9960859

formula verification

0.468999982 L sickle
0.137684584 BAR melee
0.4 5/5 Empty The rage

20 * 1.13^65 * 0.8* (1 + 0.02 * 65) * (1+ 0.468999982 + 0.137684584 + 0.4) = 208173.649301 // match

So his melee damage formula is correct at least up to level 65 …

(using the same formula) Krieg’s base melee damage at lvl 76 should be …
20 * 1.13^76 * 0.8* (1 + 0.02 * 76) = 435995.722 // which doesn’t match your *1.7 empty the rage print screen …

Taking a quick look at blood overdrive 5/5 my initial result is quite contrary to your test:
krieg gained more than 500% (+5) to his melee damage multiplier when activating this close to 100 bloodlust stacks … (which again seems very at odds with your test results)

Are you on PC / Console ?

edit: the at 10/5 4.73768425 - 1.837684631 = 2.899999 o_O … less gain than at 5/5 ?! Did the 100 bloodlust stacks were not 100 at activation ?

More testing is needed to shed a bit of clarity …at some point …

#6

Okay, I went and tested it again, this time against Bullymongs and with all other melee modifiers removed via respec. So it’s level 76, buzz axe melee(not in BAR).

Default hit: https://i.imgur.com/kwWBEsr.png 500K

5/5 Blood Overdrive hit: https://i.imgur.com/5xrIgzj.png 674K

Total bonus: 35%.

This is all on PC, no mods or anything.

#7

20 * 1.13^76 * 0.8* (1 + 0.02 * 76) = 435995.722 is not 500k …

If we cannot even calculate his level scaled base melee damage … going further is a fools errand … Perhaps the progression of his melee damage bonus changes between lvl 65 and 76 …

Some other PC player should post his base melee damage pop -ups for kriegs between lvl 70 to 80 …

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#8

For the sake of rigor, I tested melee against the Sanctuary dummy, and get the same default damage.

Also, I tested Empty the Rage, and am going from 500k to 805k, or approximately 61% extra damage. So that, at least, seems to be working somewhat properly.

#9

Just for sake of completeness, did you have any gear equipped for that? Just wondering if you inadvertently had something that would give a melee or general damage bonus (potentially even a hidden one, since that can happen.)

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#10

Full Gear List:

Splasher Blashter(slag etech shotgun) (Equipped)
Bladed Hornet
Jakobs Sniper(to proc Blood Overdrive)
Maliwan Fire Pistol

Legendary Torch Class Mod
Fabled Tortoise Shield(broken for speed boost)
Blood of the Ancients(Health, Shotgun and Assault Rifle Ammo)
Pandemic Grenade Mod

That should be it.

#11

un-equip it all and take a melee swing . If the damage is the same …the gear is ‘safe’ to equip back …

#12

Ah, I found the discrepancy in your calculation, I had my badass rank activated. Gear made no difference, but without BAR I’m dealing 435k per vanilla hit.

That also accounts for the error in the Empty the Rage calculation; without my BAR active, it’s giving the full 70% expected.

With that, i’m getting exactly a 40% damage bonus from 5 points in Blood Overdrive.

EDIT: New base damage screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/dBscwQ6.png (435K)

With 5 points in Blood Overdrive active: https://i.imgur.com/tBeYRMn.png (610K)

#13

Okay, I found something even more weird. The damage bonus isn’t varying based on the number of bloodlust stacks. I noticed that my damage was 610k even though my stacks were only 95, so I went back and did it again with 100 and got the same results.

So I went and tested it with zero stacks and STILL got 610k.

I have no idea what’s going on.

#14

testing all the bloodstacks based kill skills is a bitch since the bonus is granted based on the number of stacks at activation and stacks decay so fast … it is often hard to know for sure how many stacks one had at the moment of activation without video recording … The fact that the math for the granted bonuses is not exact and the fact that I haven’t managed to isolate this parameter (current number of stacks) to ‘watch’ how it changes as various things happen doesn’t help either …

But yes Blood Overdrive seems to be even weirder than the other two … Its only saving grace its a skill most people avoid because of its nonsensical activation requirements …

Gee - if I’m capable of killing things with guns from range (gun build) … why do I need melee damage bonus with its melee range limitations ? And melee focused builds do plenty of melee damage without this, using skills that don’t require gun damage dependency to trigger …

Pretty certain this is one of the least used skills in all borderlands 2 … So its wonky workings were never worthy of closer inspection …

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How does the Bloodlust tree even work?
#15

“Pretty certain this is one of the least used skills in all borderlands 2 … So its wonky workings were never worthy of closer inspection …”

BO = blood overdrive
ToB = taste of blood

The Formula for the amount of melee damage it adds to the melee damage multiplier is largely based on the amount of skill points in ANOTHER SKILL - Taste of Blood !!

0.1 * ( BO skill rank - 1) + 0.05 * (number of BloodlustStacks at activation) * (ToB skill rank)

A few conclusions / consequences :

BO based side of the formula:
0 or 1 skill point in BO provides NO DAMAGE bonus
from 2 to 11 skill points in BO it provides from 10 % to 100% to the melee damage multiplier (REGARDLESS of the amount of bloodlust stacks)

ToB side of the formula:
At 10/5 ToB and 100 bloodlust stacks … it adds 0.05 * 100 * 10 = 500% to the melee damage multiplier.

So maximum at 10/5 BO and 10/5 ToB triggered at 100 bloodlust stacks is 600% to the melee damage multiplier (is there a COM that boosts both those skills ? Yes Legendary Reaper) . But since so much is coming from ToB instead of BO, in practice Blood Overdrive probably functions best as a 1 skill wonder for the builds that make use of Taste of Blood. (legendary sickle …) The amount of melee damage added (if you can steal gun kills with a melee build) can be massive …

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#16

Hah! Wow, that’s some darn fine detective work. I KNEW something wasn’t right!

So, uh…I guess that’s kinda good, I guess? You can double up on skills, at the very least. Funky and weird, for sure, but cool.

I’ll edit the wiki accordingly.

Nicely done! You’ve been doing good work ever since the ME3 days, iirc, cool to see you here as well :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes
#17

could you edit this thread’s name towards something more like “Blood Overdrive is Hilariously Bugged” … might get more attention that way

[Build] "Original" Bloodlust/Mania Melee Krieg
#18

To get the melee benefit from Taste of Blood, does one need any points in Blood Overdrive? Just one or how many?

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#19

you need 1 in blood overdrive to be able to trigger the blood overdrive on kill effect .
One is all you need in order for it to gain from taste the blood and bloodlust stacks .

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#20

NVM… I just realized these are bugged skills.