Grizzled vs. Explosive Punctuation?

Borderlands 3 Moze the Gunner
#1

Just as the title suggests, is one skill particularly better than the other skill in reducing Iron Bear’s cooldown?

#2

Short version: Spec into Grizzled if you are mobbing and have a class mod that boosts it to at least 8/5, otherwise only put 1 point into Grizzled and 5 into EP.

Long version:

It appears Grizzled’s ‘diminishing returns’ means that the effect reduces by 1 second with every subsequent kill to a minimum of 1 second per kill – meaning that 4 kills would grant you a 14 second reduction (5+4+3+2); the 5th kill and every subsequent kill only grants a 1 second reduction.

EP, on the other hand, causes your cooldown to tick down up to 25% faster as long as you are doing splash damage (e.g. every tick equals 1.25 seconds) – so if you did splash damage constantly, your cooldown would be reduced by up to 24 seconds.

Without class mods, EP gets you more bang for the buck than Grizzled in that you would need to kill 14 enemies with Grizzled to equal the cooldown reduction of EP. With class mods, Grizzled will begin to outperform EP at 8/5.

In my mind, the most efficient point allocation with or without mods is probably one point into Grizzled (since the effect does not appear to diminish below 1 second per kill) and 5 into EP.

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#3

Much gratitude.

I love that you added in the math to help explain things. Again thanks.

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#4

Hate how we are information starving in the game, like no clear explanation on what diminishing returns’ mean. Thanks for the infos.

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#5

Thank you for this. Went to respec last night and this was on my list of questions.

#6

Is there any update on this information?

I mean, it seems really solid and fits with what I’ve seen.but would be nice to know if anyone can verify:

1)is Grizzled working like discribed above? First kill -5 seconds, Second kill -4 seconds, etc, down to fifth(and subsequent) kills -1 second?

  1. does Explosive Punctuation work as described in the card?

I’m not geared for testing, my strengths lay in other areas but if anyone has some good maths toss up, that would be spectacular!!

@Mahtyo hey you know anything about Iron Bear cooldown interactions?

Thanks all!!

#7

No, Grizzled diminishes past 1 second. I suspect that all values are rounded and it’s not exactly 5, 4, 3, 2… However I haven’t seen or done any testing with enough accuracy to determine what the exact values are.

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#8

Nothing that hasn’t already been said here, but i do believe grizzled’s DR wears off if you don’t kill stuff for a little while. i try to take it for every build, highly recommend it. EP is a 25% CDR as long as you deal splash damage once every ~5 seconds. i’m less of a fan if that one, especially if you have CDR elsewere and usually if i’m invested that far down into DW i aim for the capstone and are short on points as is, i like to spread them out.

mostly my personal preferences though, i’ve not done any math or extensive testing.

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#9

Well, I don’t have hard numbers but ziz spent the entire night messing we the Raging Bear.

I have around 13% cooldown in GR. None anywhere else(need to start upgrading items soon).

With 5 in Grizzled and 3 in Punctuation I get Iron Bear back right about the time my splash annointment wears off, so it works out good!

Blaster is probably way more raw damage but the thing about Raging Bear is you CAN’T die in Iron Bear. Double rockets/double explosive minis is some rawdog good damage anyways. It’s tanky as hell. And fun, for me at least! As long as I’m having fun and feel competitively comfortable (it’s how I am lol) I’m good to go!

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#10

this is the biggest, important factor ! :slight_smile:

but yeah, EP might be worth it for pure IB builds, the longer cooldown the bigger benefit. were grizzled falls off ( long cooldown) EP gains more value. but stil, 25% for 5 points. idk, i need to try get a good shield with 30% iron bear CDR from kills and try !

how are you finding raging bear so far? i’m running with blast master + 3 deadlines and +5 stainless and i feel the uptime is actually rather great. i’m curious how much longer i can stay in IB with raging bear. still need to find a decent roll.

i do wonder if loop of angel is a good option for IB build. i’m not exactly sure on the numbers but i think loop of angel gives same bonus as topped off when it’s depleted - so that might be a thing?

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#11

Im piloting Bear WAY more than I’m walking. It is pretty ridiculous how long I’m in there, I ended up taking points out of Deadline as I simply didn’t need them.

Double rockets is pretty juicy dps.

Thanks for reminding me! I’m gonna search this out soon and report back.

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#12

I’m curious about this too. I can probably go do that quest in a few hours when I get home.

#13

That’s the problem I ran into. I did some hand testing (using the stopwatch on my phone while I do it) but figuring out the diminishing results per kill someone would need to analyze recorded clips for precise frame by frame. With hand testing it appears to be closer to half a second diminished with each kill. Not sure if more points slow the diminishing effect either.

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#14

@Mahtyo and @drugfreepizza

I’m going to put this here because that other topic isn’t related.

Here’s how Grizzled, EP, and Topped off seem to work together and a little info on the respect bug.

First the bug, respeccing with a shield filled causes Topped Off to stack as we know. Respeccing with no shield equipped will neither fix the bug or cause the bug. Respeccing with a Rough Rider on will fix the bug without restarting.

If you unequip your shield without restarting, Topped Off still works. The only time Topped Off doesn’t work is when you actually damage your equipped shield, or replace it with a Rough Rider. So technically you could always have Topped Off going if you just take your shield off.

How I did my tests:

Restarted after every shield change, after every respec, and after everytime I put points into my skills. Nothing indicates that the bug persists in any result.

I used the Rough Rider to simulate a broken shield because you can’t just remove your shield, and it’s super inconsistent to try and keep your shield broken.

EP tests were done on the Jack Dummy.

Grizzled Tests were done with the CaR on Sactuary.

All tests were done by emptying Iron Bear fuel with regular mini gun augments, and starting a timer on exit as soon as the screen turns black.

Gaurdian Rank is 12.86% cooldown

Give or take maybe a second for accuracy.

Heres what I got:

Full Duration w/ Rough Rider
104.02s

Full Duration manually breaking shield
98.72s (too difficult to do)

Full Duration with manually broken Loop Shield
56.83 (difficult to test)

Full Duration with Topped Off
37.57s

EP 1/5 constant splash damage
Rough Rider
99.94s (~5s saved)
Topped Off
37.09 (<1s saved)

EP 5/5 constant splash damage
Rough Rider
85.49s (~18.5s saved)
Topped Off
34.98 (~2.5s saved)

Grizzled 1/5 w/5 kills
Rough Rider
100.57s (~3.5s saved)
Topped Off
36.68s (<1s saved)

Grizzled 5/5 w/5 kills
Rough Rider
86.27 (~17.5s saved)
Topped Off
31.27 (~6.5s saved)

I then went on to test 5/5 Grizzled with only 1 kill:

Rough Rider
98.72s (~5s saved)
Topped Off
36.69s (<1s saved)

Conclusion;
Having a full shield is clearly the most important. I had assumed it was roughly 30% with Topped Off and I’ve seen other numbers thrown around but it’s closer to ~150% improved cooldown rate. Or, close to a 65% reduction in time waiting for cooldown.

None of the cooldown skills do basically anything. Grizzled does not work the way I thought it did with Topped Off, and Explosive Punctuation does almost nothing either. My guess is Topped Off reduces cooldown, and also reduces all cooldown skills and bonuses by the same percent.

However, the skills still work just not as efficiently.

EP 1/5 is useless.
EP 5/5 reduces a couple seconds, but for 5 points it’s tough to say if it’s worth it.

Grizzled 1/5 is useless.
Grizzled 5/5 with 1 kill is useless. Grizzled with 5/5 and 5 kills actually has a meaningful reduction but is still ultimately probably not worth 5 points for most builds. It could be useful for people trying to get back in as quickly as possible.

Any substantial reduction you see with EP is placebo or caused by the respec bug. Stacking 5/5 Grizzled and 5/5 EP can save you a bit of time. All of this is assuming you have full shields.

If your shield is not completely full, the skills do have a fairly substantial effect, however I retested 1/5 Grizzled and with 10 kills and the Rough Rider, you only get less than 6s off. There is no situation where 1/5 Grizzled or 1/5 EP is ever worth it, even if you are for whatever reason using a Rough Rider because it doesn’t do anything more than a couple seconds off the full cooldown. With Topped Off it has less than 1 second difference. Just put that point literally anywhere else.

If there’s anything I missed I can always go check it, but this testing is extremely boring to do because of the respec bug.

Edits for typos

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Raging bear vs blast master
#15

I find EP to be the best of the 3 personally. It is the most reliable in that all you have to be doing is splash damage. If you are spec’d this far into DW you are probably going to be running a lot of splash damage. For me, I find 2 to 3 points to be the sweet spot for CDR for IB with optimal use with auto bear. By the time Bear dies my skill is already recharged and ready to go. Now if only exiting IB was a LOT faster. I personally think most of the Moze skills need to be reworked as in Buffed. The good choices are obvious as it is very clear as to what you want to take. Which is both a good and a bad thing. Good as it is easy to build, bad as in there is no real variety to options. All the IB skills should also add either survivability or DPS to Moze, or alternatively add more DPS to IB than they currently do. IB is still a DPS loss. Don’t get me started on Moze anointments. A personal pet peeve of mine is Torgue Cross-Promotion (I know not IB or CDR related). I personally think TCP should be +15% Splash damage and doubled area.

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#16

While I agree TCP is completely useless and in the running for worst skill in the game out of any VH, I don’t really agree with taking any points in EP. Mostly just because of personal playstyle though.

If you’re going up to Short Fuse with 26 points, and putting the other 22 into a different tree, you’d have to pull points out of way better skills out of DW to put them in EP. You should never have any points in EP if you have zero in Dead Lines or Stainless Steel Bear. If you leave the extra fuel from those skills in Iron Bear and exit, you’ll have a quicker cooldown than using EP.

Unless you’re using a rough rider or an extremely slow shield, Topped Off will proc and give you a substantially higher bonus to cooldown. And Topped Off negatively impacts both Grizzled and EP (not sure if it’s a bug or intended). While Topped Off is proccing it reduces other cooldown buffs significantly, basically to near uselessness. Grizzled with 5 points can still have a minor effect, EP has an almost entirely placebo effect if your shield is full. If you’re taking a lot of damage EP can have an alright effect, but if you’re playing like that you should reconsider the shield you’re using.

#17

The thing is Grizzled is a kill skill. It is MUCH less useful against a lot of bosses with few things to kill. I use an all purpose build, so I find I don’t want to be too heavily invested in kill skills for when bossing. My current build uses 2 points in grizzled, but before that when I had 0 EP still had my IB up as soon as auto bear kamakized himself. All my weapons are Torgue or do explosions/splash of some kind though. I am not saying kill skills are bad, but if you have too many I find it can bite you in the behind in certain content. At least that has been my experience. My current build doesn’t use fire in the skag den as I don’t like setting myself on fire when trying to heal with my transformer + shock nades and vampyr. I find having a better IB useful in certain situations. While typically I jump out immediately, there are times where I stay in to block a path and then jump out while using IB bubble shield and IB itself as a shield. IB still not very good at damage output imo, but at least now with the buffs it makes a decent oh sh*t button.

#18

If your sole intention is to use Dead Lines and Grizzled to skip FitSD, then sure. But if you’re going up that tree and still putting points into EP and only 2 in Grizzled, I think you might be wasting points.

It sounds like you’re making use of Topped Off more than any cooldown skills. I generally agree though, that Grizzled being a kill skill is a downside because against bosses without enemies to kill it doesn’t do a while lot (though if there are enemies, auto bear tends to kill them instead of fighting the boss).

You’ll almost always be better off with 5/5 Grizzled and 0/5 EP than 2/5 Grizzled and 5/5 EP from a waste of points angle. EP is too high in the tree for way too little benefit, unless you use a rough rider or a really slow shield, which probably isn’t a good idea if you want to use Iron Bear.

#19

Explosive Punctuation is alright until you get Topped Off, at which point it becomes almost completely irrelevant due to diminishing returns of Cooldown Rate bonuses. For EP to even matter post Topped Off it would take at least 3 times the bonus, which would make it extremely strong for a Cooldown skill. As it stands EP is the second of Moze’s skills that gets ruined by Guardian Ranks. And yes, your shield won’t always be full, far from it in fact, but even a short period with full capacity makes a much bigger difference than EP could in the same time.

Grizzled at least gives a static reduction to the Cooldown time, which makes it at least somewhat noticable while Mobbing. You can relatively quickly shave 10 seconds off your Cooldown, which makes it a good skill for Bearhopper-Builds (builds that go for auto bear with its normal duration).

If you ask me, then Moze could use a skill that reduces her base Cooldown by a static amount. At 5/5 a reduction of the base Cooldown by 30 seconds would work wonders (although such a hefty reduction should probably be a tier 5 skill for balance sake; might be a way to rework EP into a solid skill, even post Topped Off). Edit: This new version of EP should - for thematic flavor - only work while you hold a gun that deals splash damage and for 5 seconds after you dealt splash damage (in which case the Cooldown rate would tick down from the reduced Cooldown time, which would basically result in a times 1.33 multiplier to Cooldown rate regardless of other percentage based Cooldown rate bonuses).

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#20

Just a heads up, while Topped Off is proccing, currently Grizzled doesn’t reduce the full amount it should. For some reason it diminishes substantially too, though still more useful than EP.

5 kills at 5/5 should give ~17.5 seconds but it gives closer to 6.5.

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