Now that the game is released and people have had time to test Zane he’s been getting a lot of flack (heh) for his lacklustre skills, both passive and active. I wanted to write an official complaint and detail everything I think is wrong with Zane and why he desperately needs a buff in order to be an enjoyable character to play.
To begin with, his DPS throughout the game is pretty trash. Any damage boosting skills he has come with conditions. You have to have your action skills out, you have to be moving fast, you have to keep a kill streak going, you have to keep your shields at max, etc.
His action skills do very little damage.
The best you can do is probably a grenade sacrifice buffed, super badass clone with the final upgrade, equipped with a rocket launcher. With the serious nerf to rocket launchers between previous games and this game though, even this is pretty poor.
There’s also no guarantee your clone will even survive very long. Especially if you try to use the “hold button to blow up clone” skill (which looks like it does a lot of damage but often fails to make much of an impact, at least during the end game) or the “enemies more likely to target clone after spawn or swap” skill.
The grenade throwing perks might do something but honestly I’ve never noticed their impact, other than occasional self damage. Since you don’t get to aim them and your clone just throws them in front at a set distance (I think) there’s not really any way to ensure it will be useful.
Oh your clone can also miss their shots, use guns improperly and doesn’t use the alt configuration for any guns. So atlas guns don’t enjoy their main selling feature when given to a clone and they can’t take advantage of things like Vladof underbarrel weapons, Torgue sticky bombs and any other alt-fire. By ‘use guns improperly’ I mean things like using a jacobs pistol with a fire rate of 12 and instead of firing rapidly, reloading and firing rapidly they take 3 seconds to aim, shoot one bullet, take 3 seconds to aim, shoot, etc. Means that a lot of weapons are simply wasted in the clone’s hands.
The drone isn’t terrible but could certainly be a lot better. It might be able to kill 1 or 2 normal enemies by the time it’s deployment is over.
I find that the cryo bullet upgrade is nice in the early game but becomes obsolete later since badasses and bosses can’t be frozen (this also applies to half of Zane’s ice based abilities since they require enemies to be frozen.)
The rocket pods don’t really add very much damage and generally just go unnoticed.
The Almighty Ordinance skill is anything but ‘almighty’. I’ve been using it for the last 3 hours and have yet to manage to refresh the drone’s air-time by killing an enemy with it. The damage is pitiful for a once per launch skill, there’s a delay between when you select the target and the rockets hit, plus enemies will dodge out the way minimising any damage done to them or outright avoiding it.
The bad dose skill seems alright. It’s noticeable though I can’t say whether it’s for the damage or because it procs radiation on a lot of enemies.
Static field is terrible simply because it does almost no damage and restores almost no shields. Might be alright in the early game but by late game you usually have about 10,000-15,000 shields with smgs dealing 200-400 damage per shot at 6-12 shots per second, while this skill does 141 damage/shield recovery per second. It’s just terrible.
The barrier is probably Zane’s most reliable skill. The extra 25% damage it gives to bullets passing through it is nice and makes a noticeable difference. However the particle effect on bullets buffed like this is awful and can make it difficult to aim continuous shots since they will block out your view of the enemy you were firing at. More than once I’ve realised that I’ve been shooting at where the enemy used to be and just hadn’t seen them move out of the way because the particle effects blocked my sight. The dome version also puts a load of panels over your screen, obscuring parts of it with the lines between the panels.
The barrier also doesn’t block splash damage and some people have reported that certain weapons enemies use can go right through the shield. Personally i find it’s far less useful against badass fanatics and their rocket launchers, at least in handheld mode. Enemies tend to wander into the placed version too easily as well, unless you have the electro shock mod.
The charged relay modification is good. It synergises with the speed based damage increase passive in the blue skill tree.
Nanites or some ■■■■■ is more of the ■■■■■ and less of the rest. (Edit: hah, the website censors the actual skill name.) The majority of your health is shields and enemies will burn though your pitiful default health really quickly, so health regen is meh. The reload time decrease is barely noticeable. Very weak at only 11%. The shield recharge delay isn’t bad but honestly you don’t need it if you’re already behind the barrier since you have shelter where you can let your shields recover, especially in handheld mode.
The dome shield is probably the best modification. The extra cooldown time is worth it for the all round protection. The panel pattern is annoying but far from a deal breaker. Great for helping out a team too.
The 10% gun damage is meh. It’s not bad, it’s just not really much of a modification. Also a bit too small to be noticable.
The shock damage on enemy touching the barrier is good. Mostly for the stagger since that protects you from melee enemies. The damage is a nice bonus if you tend to melee enemies but nothing special, especially considering Zane isn’t really designed for any melee combat.
As for his passive skills, they have very little synergy. The best you can get is the few ice based skills (which honestly seem like an after thought because there’s only 4-5 and all but 2 of them have nearly useless effects) and the skills that require full shields with the skills that start shield recharge after a specific thing happens, like swapping places with your clone. (Honestly the worst skill to attach a shield recharge to because if your clone is distracting enemies then as soon as you swap places with them you’re probably going to get hit by a bullet that was meant for your clone, reinstating the shield recharge delay.)
A lot of Zane’s kill skills are pretty stupid. I mean, one of them is grenade regeneration. Grenade regeneration on a character that gives up their grenade throwing ability to equip two action skills. Action skills that are absolutely necessary to take advantage of the best skills like ‘increased gun damage per action skill active’. Other useless ones include health regen and life steal since there are very few health boosting items and Zane has no health based perks (should really turn damage into shield instead of health as that might actually be useful). His reload speed kill skill is also pretty bad. There’s no reason half this skill should be locked away behind a kill requirement. It’s only a 30% buff at best and would really not be that much different if it was a flat upgrade. Maybe if it reduced reload speed by 75% for 3 seconds after a kill it would be worth it but right now it’s just not worth the points. I only put points in it because it’s the best of the worst options so that I can get further down the skill tree. Playing dirty is pretty useless too. A chance for an extra projectile for the next 5 shots. Useless on shotguns, SMGs, assault rifles and non-jacobs pistols because their effect is so miniscule (10 pellet shogun becomes 11 pellet shotgun, or 5 shots is nothing in a mag of 20-70 where individual bullets do very little damage). Cryo nova on enemy death is just weak. Max level does about 500 damage. An SMG in late game can do 400 per bullet. It’s only good for maybe ice procs but also requires the enemy you kill to have other enemies nearby. Way too situational, way too little damage.
Note about all 3 action skills: They take ages to deploy. It’s a good second or two that you have to let the animation play as Zane throws out his drone, barrier or clone. What’s more there’s an extra delay that disables your other action skill for a few seconds after the first is deployed. This might seem like a small thing but when half your good skills depend on your action skills being out and you’re wasting a good 5-10 seconds getting your action skills out it adds up.
As for ultimate skills (the last ones in each tree), I’ve already talked about the clone one (it can be good but depends on clone survival and weapon choice). The drone tree activates all kill skills. Pretty good in theory but because so many kill skills are rubbish it has limited effectiveness. Finally the worst of the three, the barrier getting shield effects. Unless you’re always running low on ammo there’s no point to absorbing 15% of shots. The barrier doesn’t have health so anything to do with efficiency is trash, don’t know if amp shots work regardless or not. Nova’s usually only activate on shield depletion so maybe it activates when it’s time is up? Even then, very little benefit for a top tier skill. The only way I can see this being worthwhile is maybe with a legendary shield, like the one that has a chance to drop an IED 25% of the time when hit, or maybe with a shield that has the ability to reflect 15% of bullets, though I’m not sure if I’m just thinking of hyperion weapons with that one as normal shields might not have that as a modifier. Don’t think spike shields work very well either since enemies tend to get behind the barrier before meleeing you.
Ultimately Zane is currently in a really bad place. The best thing he has going for him are the hilarious voice lines you get as a reward for suffering through the game with his terrible skills.
Last note: I know that some specific legendary drops can make Zane much more viable. However, because they’re legendary drops that you would have to grind for or get lucky with, I’m not going to accept them as an excuse for Zane’s poor design.
Plus, gathering legendaries is pretty much the objective of the late game. If you need legendaries to be viable in the late game then by the time you get the right ones you’ll have nothing left to do in the late game other than maybe level guardian ranks.