With so much talk about how Iron Bear’s scaling isn’t worthwhile endgame, a lot of people are getting turned away from playing Moze, thinking she doesn’t make the cut endgame. With this build, I’m going to prove just how wrong that is. While Ironbear may not have a place endgame, Moze is (in my opinion) the strongest endgame character.
You want explosions? I don’t mean some explosions, nor do I mean lots of explosions, nor even a metric ton of explosions, I mean infinite, non-stop explosions. If that’s what you want, you’ve come to the right place. If that’s not what you want, I pity you.
For the build, you’re going to start by unbinding your action skill. Not literally, but we’re a better iron bear than iron bear could ever be, so you might want to rebind it to something out of the way so you don’t accidentally call iron bear when you mean to throw ALL OF THE GRENADES.
For the tree: Moze Build Tree
Video: Proving Grounds - Discipline, Circle of Slaughter
Botomless mags is our tree of choice. While the little 5% ammo regen nodes may not seem like much at first, they really matter a lot when the entire build is together. It’s the difference between a “good” magazine size, and literally never reloading. Then into Demolition woman for, of all things, primarily survivability from Vampyr, and Means of Destruction for even more ammo.
The core synergies here are Ogre providing tons of splash damage utilizing bottomless mags to never stop firing, providing more ammo and grenades from Means of Destruction, and the grenades themselves providing more grenades. So it’s just a constant infinite cycle of more ammo for more explosions for more ammo for more explosions. While explosions are healing you. mmmmm, EXPLOSIONS!
Choices should be mostly self explanatory, but I’ll cover a few that may be a bit more confusing.
1.) No Scrappy? We never reload, never run out of ammo, never need to swap weapons. In fact, only one of our weapons matters. The rest are just to match manufacturer for Matched Set. That’s why we grab Stoke the Embers instead. Even though we do extremely little fire damage, it’s something, where Scrappy is literally nothing to us and we just need the points to advance the tree.
2.) Why so much mag size? Ammo regen is based on mag size. The larger the mag, the more we regen. There’s a balance between fire rate and mag size, and for Ogre, we want it all.
3.) No Rushin’ Offensive? Throwing grenades still stops sprint, and we constantly throw grenades. So it’s a waste of a point. Also, not to often you actually want to sprint and shoot from the hip. Up to you though, it’s not detrimental, I just didn’t find it worthwhile.
4.) Seem to be actively avoiding putting points in Iron Bear? Yup, certainly are. With the full build if you ever activate Iron Bear you’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake. It will likely get you killed in Mayhem 3. You get in, realize exactly where you went wrong in life, exit IB (or get forced to exit from it getting oneshot by someone breathing on it), and by the your grenades have stopped landing, and thus stopped leeching, aaaaaaaand dead.
5.) Pull the Holy Pin: This is actually very important. Not only is it a lot of extra grenade damage, but the crits from grenades (which being of the tesla variant, so they crit constantly), but all those crits also keep Redistribution procced for ammo regen even when you’re not actually hitting anything with your rifle.
For gear, there’s a few items you want.
Weapon: Ferocious Ogre: (preferably “Engulfing” for larger explosions). Ogre is the perfect match for the build. High mag size, high RoF, and every shot is an explosion. What more to say? If you’re still waiting on an Ogre, a high mag torgue using impact can suffice. (don’t use sticky, you want the instant explosion for consistent ammo regen). The second best option to Ogre is Bearcat. Again, more explosions, and the RoF matches the mag count well enough to work.
Shield: The Transformer: Good stats, but more importantly not only immune to shock, but adds shock damage instead as health to shields. Important to protect ourselves from our own grenades.
Class Mod: Blast Master (preferably “blood-sucking”). Grants a bunch more grenades, and increases splash damage the longer you go without reloading, eventually doubling it. Which we never reload, so it’s a match made in heaven.
Grenade: Hex (preferably “cloning”), or Stormfront. Hex is preferred, but both are great.
Artifact: Anything that boosts assault rifle damage, splash damage, grenade damage, or best a combination of these.
Other weapons: Just match vladof on the manufacturer for Matched Set. You’ll never really use any of the other weapons, so it doesn’t matter. But if you can pick, I’ve found Lyuda, Faisor, and Annexed Damned all work great with the build if you get tired of EXPLOSIONS.
For leveling, you can certainly use Ironbear. While leveling, Iron Bear is fantastic. Use double miniguns with “Exploding. Bullets.” and IB will basically grant you a short taste of the build, minus the grenade spam.
Playstyle? Uhh… hold down the trigger, keep spamming the grenade button, and point in the general direction of enemies. It’s pretty hard to die with this build to be honest, so long as you keep firing and keep throwing out grenades. Though you will need to be hitting enemies with Ogre once in a while for some grenade regen from Means of Destruction if there isn’t enough enemies for Hex to keep itself going.
To demonstrate the power here, I’ve recorded a mayhem 3 Discipline Proving Ground. Once the build fully came together, I don’t ever need to consider what the mayhem modifiers might be, because we’re just too powerful to care. In this recording, we had 70% less normal bullet damage (which is our Ogre), and enemies take 50% less damage from normal bullets (again hit to ogre), and enemies have 30% chance to reflect back projectiles (again hit to ogre). Does it matter? Nope. Still easily get all optional objectives.
IB may be completely useless endgame, but Moze is an unstoppable machine of death and explosions. While at first I was disappointed by Moze when IB failed me getting into TVHM, once I figured out how to make her a true Vladof Solider, I was happy again with a fulfilled character archetype. RIP Iron Bear. Long Live EXPLOSIONS!
Funny Side note: Moze will still occasionally credit Iron Bear for kills when you get kills with Ogre. Probably due to “Exploding. Bullets.”. So Iron Bear still lives on inside your rifle.
