A few awkward skills from fl4k's skill trees

Borderlands 3 FL4K the Beastmaster
#1

Been playing around with fl4k’s skills and i’ve noticed a few ones that look a bit off:

Master - Barbaric Yawp boosts “pet bonuses granted to fl4k” by 100%
If this skill only applies to the small passive bonus of each pet then it’s really bad, overall worse than a first tier skill (ex: a great horned skag would provide an extra 5% damage and 10% extra gun damage, which is fairly weak).
Even at 200% it’s not really that good either compared to other skills as deep as this one into their skill tree.
On the other hand, if it applies to other skills too like Eager To Please, Hive Mind and Frenzy, then it’s absolutely busted, which seems to imply it’s not the case.

Master - He Bites! makes pets reflect 15% of the damage they receive. Historically this type of skills has been underwhelming (see kinetic reflection) and 15% looks really low. Even if it’s affected by pets damage buffs and amplified by a class mod i’m worries 15% is just too low to make an impact against high level enemies.

It’s also a bit weird how the spiderant provides defensive bonuses in a skill tree that is focused on damage output.

I hope these kinks get ironed out before release, especially since the rest of the skills look quite interesting. :stuck_out_tongue:

EDIT

All in all it seems fine to have spiderants in the damage focused skill tree as they provide a bit of survivability to otherwise squishy early builds.
So overall that’s fine, especially since i suspect jabbers wouldn’t be ideal for sniping (shooting enemies causes them to move around) and the skag fits nicely in the master skill tree.

The 15% damage share skill seems weak, but it’s entirely possible it’s actually fine, i guess we need to try it out first.

Barbaric Yawp on the other hand is underwhelming if it only applies to the pets passive bonuses, while if it were to apply to other skills too (hive mind, frenzy, shared spirit, the regen from who rescued who and maybe eager to impress’ cooldown reduction when pets kill an enemy), like big game does, then it’d be an amazing skill.

If it applies to the small passive bonuses only, bumping it to 150-200% would already make it worthwhile compared to the other skills fl4k has.

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#2

Barbaric Yawp depends on the pet tbh; it works great with the spiderant because of the health regen and I’d say it has good synergy with Beefcake Jabber and Eridian Skag as well (it should be noted that FL4K like everyone else has very little in the way of fire rate buffs so increased fire rate in general is good)

re:the spiderant’s bonuses, it’s that way with the other pets too

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#3

The spiderants would provide 1% hp regen plus either 10% elemental damage resist or 5% damage resist, that’s quite bad given that it’s 5 points deep into a skill tree.
Same can be said for an extra 5% damage and 10% gun damage, or 5% movement speed and 10% max hp.

I mean, 2 points in Self-Repairing Systems (first tier of stalker skill tree) already does more than 5 points in Barbaric Yawp with a spiderant countess equipped. It’s hard to justify.

#4

FL4K really doesn’t have that much healing outside of their action skills and Rage and Recover so even an increase that small is going to add to their overall survivability a lot. Ditto with the 10% max health (and plus all of FL4K’s healing is percent-based so y’know, synergy and stuff).

#5

It’s still 5 points, deep into a skill tree, for the same bonus offered at 2 points as the first skill in a different tree.

It’s not even +1% hp regen and +10% hp, it’s +5% damage reduction or 10% elemental damage reduction and you’re forced to pick a spiderant to get the extra healing.

Even if the skill was twice as powerful (+200%) it’d still be comparable to other, easier to obtain skills. :confused:

Speaking of rage and recover, amara gets a permanent 5% missing hp regen as her first skill of the brawl skill tree, fl4k gets 8% for 3s after a kill as the skill just before a capstone. Yes technically more and the pet gets some of it, but oof. If it was max hp regen then sure, missing hp kinda stinks.

#6

SRS’s health regen is 2% at 5 points and if Joltz and K6’s videos are to be believed is actually 1.5% at 5/5 so Yawp is far less subject to diminishing returns than you’re making it out to be.

Keep in mind that despite not having any shield skills FL4K is still going to need to rely on their shield for defense so any DR is good nonetheless (and also it’s basically a multiplicative health/shield increase so /shrug)

re:Amara, FL4K might be less squishy than Mordy or Zer0 or whatever but they’re definitely not meant to be a tank like the others so comparing them is kind of a moot point imo

edit: given the way SRS’s health regen increases in the online skill tree it seems likely that it’s rounded there and the regen actually is 0.3% per point so at 2/5 it would be 0.6%

#7

Also, I suspect versatility was factored into the balance.

#8

Moxxi " hey Fl4k, why don´t you pet my pussycat and see what bonuses she gives to you "

#9

Are you really trying to say that barbaric yawp providing 1% hp regen and 5% damage reduction is a good skill especially considering how deep into the skill tree it is? I’d take 5/5 on SRS over it any time.

I don’t see what you mean by diminishing returns, %max hp regen isn’t affected by them. :open_mouth:

#10

Uh, yeah? No need to be snarky.

Diminishing returns as in stacking health regen. Like how additive damage works.

#11

The balance of this game, including the enemies damage output : health : player health : player damage output ratios will be a lot closer in this game than BL2.

The lvl 1 valdof pistol only does 8 damage. A lvl 29 valdof pistol does ~90 damage.

Similarly, in BL2 at lvl 29 you would have ~2769 health(if I did my calculation right), but in one stream I watched they had 1061 health. So damage to health ratios are a lot tighter.

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#12

Well, the same is true for BLTPS too.

I honestly don’t know how good the damage reflect skill is since i’d need to try it, but barbaric yawp really looks mediocre if the only thing it buffs are the tiny pet passive bonuses. That’s true regardless of how scaling ends up working.

If a dev ends up looking at this thread i hope they’d consider tweaking that single skill a bit, 200% would be perfectly fine (at which point it’d be comparable to other skills fl4k already has in the first half of his skill trees). It’s my single biggest gripe currently.

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#13

My issue is with Hidden Machine and The Power Inside. In the skill tree builders they have a flat number but I feel like they’re meant to be percentages. Zer0 essentially had his own version of HM in BL2. So are they supposed to be flat numbers? And if so do they scale? Because if not these skills lose a lot of value. On second look the Guard Skag even says Damage: 5, when I’m sure it’s supposed to be +5%

Every character has these weird flat numbers that I really don’t like but at least those are all associated with Novas and projectiles specific to a skill.

Edit: Found a video(Ki11er Six) showing that all the Fl4k skills I brought up are in fact supposed to be percentages. Still not sure how I feel about the flat numbers on Action skills, Novas, etc. But I guess it doesn’t matter much to me since I’ll mostly be playing Fl4k :smiley:.

#14

I think those flat numbers increase with level. It’s probably their way of eliminating that “rank damage” thing from BL2 by telling us the actual damage.

#15

The Power Inside ? :face_with_monocle:

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#16

I don’t doubt that was what they were going for haha.

#17

What’s so weird about the spider skill tree giving both damage skills and a defensive pet? These 2 things go well together, and even though it looks to be ‘the sniper tree’, the skills seem to work well with other close to mid-range weapons too. Not to mention you can mix the spiderant with other trees too.

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#18

It feels odd because if you want a regen focused build it may be hard to pick one of the 2 improved spiderants, but otherwise i guess it’s fine since it lets early sniper builds have a bit of free regen.

My main gripes are the damage reflect (which i’d have to try out, maybe it works just fine) and barbaric yawp (which is objectively terribad).

#19

My assumption, just from the Yawp, is that we’re missing some crucial bit of info on how something in this scenario works. I used Yawp to climb the tree, but if it comes out as blah as you think, then that just means more points for the start tiers. :slight_smile:

I try to brightside things like this:

If a high tier skill doesn’t hold water, that’s more points for base skills!

Edit: actually, unless Yawp comes up with something I’m missing, I’m putting my three points in Go For The Eyes and Who Rescued Who

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#20

I wonder what is meant by “Pet Bonuses” in Barbaric Yawp? Is it bonuses granted to Fl4k by his pets through the skills or pet choice/upgrades or both? Or is it bonuses that upgrades their pets?

Like. Is it;

A.) Jabber Sidekick Bonus when “equipped” will be an additional +5% movement speed (making it 10% Movement Speed)
B.) “Who Rescued Who?” at 5/5 will give an additional 2% Health Regen to Fl4k when the pet gets a kill (making it 4% Health Regen)
C.) “Ferocity” at 5/5 will give an additional +50% pet damage (making it +100% pet damage)
D.) Both A and B
E.) None of the Above

I want answers!

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