Issues Regarding Mayhem 3 + Certain enemies

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 General Discussion
#1

As it stands, Mayhem mode is far too difficult to even call it fun. After starting my NG+ at level 50 (TVHM) I started out on Mayhem 1 and slowly worked my way up to 3. Generally speaking enemies aren’t too bad and it’s cool to see some new ones that you don’t see during the first play through. However, the modifiers don’t really add anything to the game that make it more fun. I welcome challenge but the modifiers feel like a cheap way to make the game more difficult by making you feel weak and every enemy is basically a badass, baddasses are basically mini-bosses. I also want to make it clear that I’m using a full set of legendary gear when fighting these battles (besides my class mod, still purple)

Adding health and damage to enemies is completely fair as well as new ways to fight but most if not all the modifiers feel ridiculous. Here are some of the most frustrating I have dealt with during my time in Mayhem 3.

  • (-)50% on all guns (really just not creative modifier when coupled with the other negative modifiers).
  • 50% increase on enemy accuracy (turns all AI into aim-bots and makes strafing feel completely useless).
  • +2 extra projectiles per shot (on top of the existing modifiers, this seems like much…)
  • negative weapon and elemental modifiers which stack on top of each other (dividing damage half only to divide that half again if you have a weapon that lands itself in both categories is absurd; pick one)
  • additional 45% MORE health on top of the already existing modifier while playing on Mayhem 3 (150% health + 200% shields and armor on Mayhem 3 w/o the 45%)
  • ALL negative elemental damage modifiers (my main issue with this is when it pairs with damage reduction on all guns or specific guns and that there is no (+) modifier to another element)

These are only a few that I’ve picked that make the game feel frustrating and lose its fun. I think that most of the modifiers are in the same state as the ones mentioned above and need to be completely changed and rebalanced adding more positves the modifiers without any or with too little in the player’s favor. Sadly, the problem doesn’t end there. Certain enemy types (mostly bandits) have ridiculous mechanics that make them annoying to fight.

Annointed- Biggest issue with this enemy type is the immunity phases they get during a fight when other enemies are attacking from afar as well as well as they can simply run away from a fight by teleporting or chase you down if you decide to run with the same method.

Bots- This one is very specific to a certain type of bot that can encountered on Promethea. There is a type of bot that can regenerate their shields in the middle of you attacking it…regenerating shields back is fine but while I’m shooting the damn thing doesn’t really feel fair since players can’t regen shields while taking damage, this should work the same for these enemies as long as you keep pressing the attack.

Tank Tinks- 3 varying health bars (shields, armor, and normal health) which when couples with some of the negative modifiers for certain damage types which chances are, you have at least one of them the ones that are strong against one of those 3 health bar types. With a super small hitbox and 3 varying health bars these enemies can be very frustrating to take down in the midst of other bandits rushing you or shooting from cover. 3 health bars isn’t much of a bother but at least make them 2 types instead of 3.

Rocket Spammers- Any type of mob that uses a rocket launcher or explosive AOE is the bane of my existence. The only way to deal and their endless shooting barrage is try to kill them before they kill you. Seriously just give them a reload animation so there is an actual window to attack instead of just having to face the assault head on, hoping that your movement will let you dodge an AOE attack…not likely though.

I hope there are others out there that feel the same way. I thoroughly enjoy Borderlands 3 and wish to continue playing but with the current state of Mayhem 3 precarious range of difficult is something that often feels more frustrating than challenging.

If you made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read.

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#2

I love the modifiers the way they are. But I agree with removing the immunity phases of the annointed. Immortality does not belong with non-bosses. Same with the rocked spammers. You pretty much iterate my own points on the issues with certaing bandits.

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#3

I agree 100%, Modifiers are not creative and not fun. The way it is now you either face roll everything or you’re screwed and are better off save quitting for good modifiers. Good qualities of mayhem mode that should be preserved are loot, forcing build variety, and difficulty.

Suggested Changes:

  • Firstly, make creative modifiers. Flat damage modifiers, particularly decreases, are not interesting or fun, bl1 underdome has way better modifiers. It seem obvious that this “endgame” difficulty was throw together at the last minute, I can’t think of less creative modifiers or interesting modifiers.

  • The simplest one is decrease the modifiers effects, the would reduce the need to farm modifiers before you can play the game. :slight_smile:

  • My favorite suggestion for balancing mayhem I’ve heard is to reduce all the modifiers values to be static at a % close to mayhem 1 or 2 and have the only difference between mayhem levels be the health/shield/armor increase and the number of modifiers.

  • Another very simple thing, which should already be in the game, is an alternative difficulty for endgame. The health/shield/armor of mayhem with no modifiers, most of the time I wish I could be playing that instead of mayhem. A standard consistent endgame difficulty is essential for comparing and testing different gear and builds, if you ask me thats is most of why people play this game and is undeniably the biggest source of replayability. Tvhm does not fill this role, it’s way too easy for optimizing builds are gear to be necessary.

Enemy Balance: I think this is something that is being dangerously overlooked, largely because everytime someone mentions an enemy type being too hard or poorly designed a fl4k player will appear and tell you something to the effect of “git gud, idiot” and these seem to be the people gearbox is listening to. Apologies to fl4k players that don’t do that but sadly I’ve seen this almost everywhere the topic comes up. When playing a character that is comparatively less OP, poor balance and enemy design become painfully obvious. Just because you ‘can’ kill an enemy very quickly does not mean they’re balanced or well designed.

What needs changing and how to do it:

  • Number one is anointed spawn rates. As it stands now in most COV areas there are multiple anointed in every engagement, this is blatantly ridiculous. Relative to other enemies they are stupidly tanky and an absolute chore to fight, does anyone enjoy fighting anointed? The fact that they are immune to cryo is completely unnecessary. Personally, I think the game would be better if anointed were completely removed or at the very least made a rare encounter, maybe 1-2 per map instead of 1-5+ per engagement.

  • Anointed Militants are the worst enemy in the game, easily. The main problem with them is the fact that that they are immune to all damage during 2 or thier 3 attacks. They can chain these immune attack back to back, my highest was 11 immune phases in a row :wink:, and they are one of the tankiest enemies in the game to boot, sound fun yet? Making an enemy immune during an attack removes choice from the player, there is no longer a risk/reward trade off between being aggressive or defensive. Immunity to all damage is never a enjoyable mechanic, its justifiable for phase changes of a boss or in some cases phase changes of an enemy but in the case of the anointed militant it’s simply horrendous . I think this enemy needs to be entirely redesigned or removed from the game.

  • Enemies with rocket launchers, mainly BA zealots. BA zealots are an extremely common enemy at tvhm mayhem 3 and they all have rocket launchers :slight_smile:. These are weapons that generally kill the player in two shots and in most rooms there are more than one. Unless you have very high damage output and can kill them before they kill you, remembering that there are usually more that one at a time, it’s very difficult to kill them without going into ffyl for it. Does anyone find this fun? I don’t know anyone who does. The only enemies that should be able to spawn with rocket launchers are goliaths, this would be much more balanced and interesting for the player as it gives a choice to fight an enemy with rockets or a raging goliath as opposed to your current choice of win the dps race of go down.

These are the only enemies that stand out to me as significantly unfair and a detriment to fun. I really enjoy maliwan enemies, though they could maybe use a slight health increase at endgame. The combat in this games is excellent, it’s far and away the best part of the game, and it’s scares me that gearbox seems to not know what they have and plan to make it worse. It seems like they are more interested in balancing the game around fl4k and than balancing fl4k around the game. All of these changes I’ve mentioned seem very simple to implement to me and I think they would be a drastic improvement, what do you think?

Edit: I made this into its own topic: Mayhem 3 and Enemy Balancing Suggestions

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#4

Love the post and most of these are good ideas. I really like the idea that making modifiers static across all the mayhem modes is a great idea and just increase health, armor, and shields.

Perhaps instead of outright changing the modifiers (although I wish they would) changing values might be a better step to take for balancing before doing a complete overhaul but I still stand by my first post. There is a bit of redundancy going on and that needs to change along with the values.

I also want to throw out the idea to add to existing/new modifiers and that is categorization. Categorize modifiers in the game code so that players can only get so many of a certain kind of modifier, this might make it so there aren’t so many overlapping modifiers with the same end result (reducing damage in most cases).

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#5

I don’t know if this works in in other Mayhem modes, but I think I found a way to deal with the Annointed.

Don’t use elemental weapons!

I found that once I started dropping DOTs, they go immune and start some beefy AOE charge attack of the element you hit them with. …So I switched to a Jacobs and they just kinda walk around waiting for you to make them attack :stuck_out_tongue:

If I’m mistaken, feel free to let me know.

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#6

we need this! just tone down mayhem abit and we gucci >u<

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#7

I have found that incendiary works well, seems to just destroy them, even on Mayhem 3.

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#8

There is one modifier that I think was implemented by mistake and it is “enemies have 30% chance to reflect projectiles back to player.” An occasional enemy may have “Thorns” ability, even thugh it is not the best of designs. Having “Thorns” applied for the entire population, in a non MMO is just bad.

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#9

I can agree with most of this.

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#10

Anointed Tink - Weakness(Normal, ?), Immune(ice, ?) / Attacks - Teleport, Gun, Eridium Orb Toss, ?

Anointed Goliath - Weaknese(Normal, Corrosive, ?), Immune(Ice, ?), Reist(?), immune phase / Attacks - Teleport, Flame Homing Skulls, Shock Wave Clap, Ground Pound, Body Slam, Lunge, Eridium Orb Toss

Anointed Maniac - Weakness(Normal, Fire, Corrossive, Radiation), Immune(Ice), Resist(Shock) / Attacks - Teleport, Meat Axe Swing, Suicide Bomb, ?

Anointed Zealot - Weakness(?), Immune(Ice, ?), Resist(?) / Attacks - Teleport, AoE Eridium Orbs, Homing Eridium Orb(AoE on Explosion), Eridium Orb Toss, ?

All of them are ice immune, some can resist certain elements, and they all have feints.

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#11

I’m not happy at all with Mayhem Mode modifiers. I would much prefer the traditional increase to health, regen and damage reduction(similar to the old OP levels). It would be fine to keep the Mayhem modifiers but maybe limited to like a proving grounds style of combat but as far as a general endgame goes, I find this severely uncreative, boring and very lacking.

I guess it’s an interesting idea in theory but doesn’t translate to being fun in practise, imho.

I really hope we end up getting a more traditional endgame environment to play in with further DLC. I thoroughly enjoy being challenged but the way Mayhem modifiers are currently set up is just silly, ridiculous and to random.

Perhaps they could make a Digipeak style map in a future DLC and apply the Mayhem modifiers stuff there and put the game back to a more traditional challenge.

#12

Have to agree on this one. It seems at least half of all badasses spawn with one. Bl2 had very specific instances where enemies had them and it worked perfectly, bl3 is just ridiculous though. I can’t imagine how non-moze players respond when 2 hardened badass zealots with cryo launchers converge on your position.

#13

Generic + or - damage modifiers are just not fun and not creative at all.

And modifiers need to be grouped in tiers so we don’t see 3 times the same one or weird combos that make no sense.

The fact that we can just leave and come back to switch the modifiers is not a good thing either imo. Maybe they should be weekly or a few days cycle. Once they are better organised of course because being stuck for a week with the weird combos we can get now won’t be better^^

#14

Torgue with stickies work well.

I usually hit them until u dont see resist, then stick with that gun

#15

+1 to literally everything said here. This echoed my sentiment and articulated my thoughts to perfection.

I personally think the mayhem modifiers should be confined to their own subsection of endgame and endgame instead should be more traditional in terms of difficulty, similar to old OP levels a simple increase to health, health regen and damage reduction.

I find all of the random mayhem modifiers lazy, uncreative and just plain silly. It would be fine if mayhem modifiers where relegated to a particular area, like something similar to proving grounds or its own area but this simply will not do as the main attraction to endgame. By far my biggest disappointment so far.

Also, as mentioned, it’s easier to compare and contrast builds and weapons with a static endgame as opposed to all the random, dynamic modifiers. It just feels like a generic way to artificially attempt to create additional replayability but I don’t see that doing it for myself(and I imagine a lot of the old hardcore fans).

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#16

Yeah I’ve only played Moze so far but I’ve been thinking how some of this would be almost impossible to survive with others on M3.

Multiple badasses spamming elemental rockets endlessly is a little ridiculous. I’m playing it for the loot drops obviously, but a lot of it is pretty anti-fun. The bullet reflection mod, the - gun damage and elemental mods combined with the insane shields. Basically everything you guys have said.

And as also mentioned, holy s*** the m3 anointed militants are probably the worst enemy I’ve every seen in any Borderlands game.

1 Like
#17

I’m not even sure where to begin. I’ve almost coped with having to carry an entire weapons rack on my back to adapt to these cheap modifiers. Once I’m done equipping the proper weapons I begin to Fade Away and I suddenly die, realizing that enemies also have a 30% chance to reflect my shots.

It kind of feels like cheating to reload the map until I find something suitable. I would kill for something more consistent. And the removal of reflects applied to everybody.

#18

Anointed Militants - in need of a serious rework. The Anointed Alpha you meet during the Hammerlocks prisoner buddies quest seems like a far better version of that.

BA Zealots - Using a rocket launcher as if its a Jakobs revolver is quite terrible. Maybe I could deal with the damage, but the absolute cluster*** that happens on your screen when theres two or more of these is horrible. And if its a Cryo launcher, then theres a good chance you’ll go down.

Modifiers - Either very lazy +X or -X modifiers, or downright ridiculous (like 2 extra projectiles, -50% crit damage, -50% all gun damage). Sometimes overlapping or even cancelling each other. Occasionally they actually turn into massive buffs for the player that make Mayhem 3 easier then just regular TVHM. The whole thing needs a total rework. Im also for having some sort of static enemy buffs, with some fun additional random modifiers. NO PLAYER DEBUFFS. Just enemy buffs.

Some fun modifier ideas :
Cannibals (bandits will “eat” the corpses of their fallen to create a MEAT SHIELD). Kind of what ratches already do, I think.
Stoneskin - enemies turn to stone and become invulnerable after dropping to x% of health for x seconds and cannot be damaged, or do any actions themselves. (Makes you switch to another enemy, while the affected are turned to stone)
Thievery - Enemies will steal ammo/grenades from you.
Speedy - Enemies gain increased movement speed.
Teleportation - Self explanatory.
Bards - Some enemies can buff others damage/accuracy etc with their presence.
Staggering bullets - Self explanatory.

I could come up with way more, if I wanted to. These are just examples of what kind of modifiers would potentially be fun (at least to me).
My idea would be that only a few of these could be active at any given session, and they would only affect a certain % of the enemies (not all of them).

#19

The annointed and the tink tanks are the worst. With the annointed, Moze has a hard time with the entire “don’t use elements” thing when your build is speced around dealing incendiary damage. To me the annointed have been a bit broke since release, they’re almost like mini-bosses with how tough they are, but in Mayhem 3 they’e EVERYWHERE, which is annoying and kinda unfair since they’re so incredibly tough

#20

Anointed, use 3 or 4 level 50 pipe bombs and they get vaporized.