So I’ve been watching some gameplay on all 4 of the vault hunters and Zane looks the weakest compared to the other vault hunters and that worries me a lot. His kill skills don’t stack, his kill skills don’t really give a huge buff, and his capstone gameplay was fun to see but it didn’t seem very effective like the others, plus he is the only one to receive a huge nerf before the game even came out. Not only Zane, but I also have noticed that Moze’s bear mech is pretty underpowered as well but Amara and Fl4k seem perfect. I just hope Zane gets a huge buff so he can be as powerful. Also his Hitman tree needs some work in my opinion, they went in the right direction but the drone and the buffs just seem too weak. Also Zane’s diminishing return to his action skill duration seems extremely unnecessary to me imo. Not to mention the unneccessary cooldown increase in Zane’s action skill. It just seems like they’re making FL4K their priority while leaving the other Vault Hunters in the dust.
Amara’s action skill damage is lacking and FL4K’s pet could potentially be a HUGE hindrance late game. Iron Bear is just… IDK HOW they’ll fix that given how powerful Moze is without using it.
As for Zane, I think he is in a really good place. He has a good deal of damage increase potential, fantastic utility, early game lifesteal (which has massive potential), double the kill skill time, buffs, debuffs… I just think he is a more advanced character. He doesn’t appear weak or underpowered to me, just requires a tad more strategy and thought.
I see your point. But we can both agree that Moze’s Bear Mech needs A LOT of work.
Remember, all the builds you’ve seen were pre-made. Once you get to choose your weapons and class mods and skills, sure Zane will be in a good place. Obviously we’ll find out…SOON 
I think Zane is the best support character in the game, he has the best quality of life skills in the game, and he requires the most skill to use…but like Axton hes going to have a damage issue in the endgame.
All of Zane’s damage increases are additive…meaning they have diminishing returns. All the other characters have multipliers.
Amara: Bonus Elemental damage with forceful expression and personal space. If they keep the same damage calculations as B2 Tempest is a multiplier that double dips.
Moze: Moze has bonus incendiary damage and Short fuse is 4 times as powerful as forceful expression. It’s a prime candidate for a +2 capstone class mode.
Fl4k: he has Crit damage coming out of his a**.
Edit* Thier a**
Zane has 1 skill that gives bonus shock damage and its conditional. He also has the clone capstone which probably has the most potential…but we dont know how it will fair against the toughest enemies.
I think he is what he is. Hes never going to be an DPS juggernaut.
I think Zane’s Barrier and Doubled Agent Tree are great as is, and give some of the more interesting and potentially broken capstones out there. The Hitman tree was great before the nerfs, but after the nerfs it just kinda comes of as poorly designed.
Both Donnybrook and Violent Violence are exceedingly weak as dps killskills, pretty much losing to the every single killskill in Borderlands history, and also losing to the passive dps skills of the other 3 classes and even Zane himself, which is really weird. Pre-nerf, Donnybrook and Violent Violence stacked - which made those small numbers make sense, and was a big step forward in terms of Killskill design. But now that they don’t stack, it won’t seem as if the Killskills are massively affecting your dps at all, as they did in Brick, Krieg and Jack. Furthermore, having extended killskill duration AND the ability to automatically proc your killskills would have been great in strategizing to stack your killskills, but now just seems like a crutch for low skill gameplay.
You explained it very well and I agree. It was awesome before the nerf, now it’s almost pointless to go in the hitman tree.
If it makes you feel any better I plan of maining Amara and her action skills suuuuuuuuck.
Has a ridiculous cooldown for slam and cast for what you actually get and her best action skill Phasgrasp doesnt really trigger any of her other skills on the tree.
I predict Zane to be extremely strong once you get the synergies rolling.
This is the build I have in mind kill skills ftw
Imagine this build with a mod that enables Double Barrel, the clone capstone.
Sure you will have to alternate those action skills to some degree, but with some cooldown reduction from a mod I can see alot of potential in this type of build.
Wait really? Dang I think they need to rework some skills on some characters before launch lol
Not gonna lie, I wanna try out your build, it seems extremely strong
Amaras skills are a little restrictive, that’s for sure… but I think the 3 main build types will perform good depending on scaling in lategame
Status build is the least dependend on skill or melee dmg scaling.
We’ll see, maybe builds will look completely different in 4 weeks 
Once more I suggest to wait for the final game. We don’t really know BL3’s mechanics yet so we don’t know if something might work much better than in BL2 with the same stats. When it comes to the gameplay videos, they’ve all been done by players with very little BL3 experience, so we don’t know yet how powerful certain skills can be if you fully utilise/exploit them.
Fl4k also has Gun Damage and General Damage boosts, which should be multiplicative with each other, on top of the crit boosts
Why would you take “Playing Dirty”?
Is it really that good? I mean 60 % only for the next 5 shots as a kill skill. That doesn´t sound very great to me. Especially not for 5 skill points.
Could only imagine this being some kinda viable when using Sniper (I dont see Zane using them) or maybe a shotgun - weapons with very high damage and low firerate. But else?
I mean: I really wouldn´t care if my smg, which fires 10 bullets/sec would fire 13 bullets in the first second and that only after doing a kill. For raid bosses I don´t even see an impact.
Or do I fail to see sth?
Nah you don’t fail to see something, this setup has specific weapons in mind, you can switch to firerate for sure. Might be the better choice in bossfights. If you can manage to reactivate that kill skill frequently with a weapon that deals high dmg/bullet I think it would result in better damage and doesnt burn your ammo as fast in the long run.
Not a fan of using grenades lately, so having two skills at once works for me.
Zane is another one of those characters that wants to be build around very few but very powerful skills. “Calm, Cool, Collected” comes to mind as well as “Double Barrel”. The “Hitman” tree for sure could use a buff, but even in there is some gold to be found, like some of SNTNL’s Augments. “Almighty Ordnance” can basically double the duration and “Winter’s Drone” makes for a great debuff machine. Still, when it comes to the regular skills in the tree, I would love some buffs for basically all Kill Skills.
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Violent Speed: Doesn’t need a buff, but an increase to 25% MS at 5/5 would be cool
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Cool Hand: Make the base bonus 15% and the kill skill bonus 30% at 5/5
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Salvation: Hard to evaluate honestly as we don’t know the scaling
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Violent Violence: Piss poor right now, at least make it a 40% fire rate buff at 5/5
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Playing Dirty: Is fine for it’s own playstyle (the perfect gunslinger skill)
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Good Misfortune: Seemed pretty good honestly so far, probably doesn’t need a buff
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Best Served Cold: Hard to evaluate, is probably better off as a one point wonder though
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Futility Belt: Is fine for 1 point, basically preventing DoTs is great!
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Donnybrook: Increase the gun damage to 20% and the health regen to 3% at 5/5
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Fractal Frags: Seems good to me
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Pocket full of Grenades: Looks fine to me as well, maybe increase it to 8% base grenade Regen?
I think he’ll be good if you make the red tree your primary tree, since the capstone gives his clone a copy of his gun, which lets him give his clone a legendary gun. The other 2 trees seem lackluster by comparison, at least as primary trees. The blue tree relies on extending and improving kill skills, but in order to get all of the kill skills you have to sacrifice points in your secondary tree, and his drone has underwhelming damage. Green tree has some good defensive buffs, but just seems underwhelming as a primary tree if you’re a solo player like me, since the capstone has minimal effect in solo play.
Here is my recommended build for Zane, which has a good mix of damage and survivability:
What the build gives you:
- A clone that can have a legendary gun and lasts for at least 15 seconds
- +40% gun damage while using both action skills at once
- +25% damage while shooting through the action skill shield
- +20% gun damage for a few seconds when swapping places with the clone
- +20% gun damage while shields are full (synergizes with action skill augment that causes the clone to draw aggro)
- +15% gun damage and 2.5% health regen a second for both Zane and the clone for 8 seconds after getting a kill
- +18% bonus shock damage to enemies that aren’t targeting Zane (synergizes with action skill augment that causes the clone to draw aggro)
- Clone throws a grenade whenever you summon him
- Clone uses grenades to improve his stats when you summon him (at 3 grenades spent, clone has +60% gun damage, +243% max health, +15% fire rate, +93% reload speed, and +75% clone duration)
- Zane regenerates 20% of a grenade per second for 8 seconds after a kill (1.8 grenades every 8 seconds, refereshed by getting a new kill during that time)
- +25% Magazine size for Zane and the Clone
- +30% shield regen delay and regen speed
- Up to 35% shorter action skill cooldowns
- Up to 5% health regen a second
- Instant shield recharge when freezing an enemy (keep a cryo gun on Zane at all times)
- 16% damage resistance to last damage type taken (will stack well with adaptive shields, which do the same thing)
- All elemental damage taken converted to non-elemental damage for 8 seconds after a kill, with 15% damage resistance to non-elemental damage
- Action skill shield staggers back any enemies that touch it, effectively making you invincible for 14 seconds if you set it up in a corner and hide behind it
I think Zane will be pretty strong, however there are a lot of problems. The hitman capstone is almost pointless, it takes literally one kill to activate kill skills, and the time they are active can be extended. Sometimes the design of some things make no sense to me (way too op or virtually useless), as if designed by people who never played a game in their lives. Oh well.