Here’s a Zane build centered around his ‘Hitman’ skill tree, focusing on maximizing the uptime of Zane’s kill skills.
While most of these builds use the Clone and Drone combo, this build actually uses a Clone and Shield variant that allows us to stack cooldown reduction and have 100% uptime on Zane’s kill skills without actually having to kill an enemy.
Here’s the skill tree:
Double Agent Tree:
- Synchonicity, Donnybrook: 5/5 points each for DPS, pretty popular picks.
- Praemunitus: 3/3 points for mag size increase for higher DPS, if stacked with a mod that has + mag size, it helps with giving great guns like Hellwalker a 3rd shell to have 2 shots per reload.
- Fractal Frags, Quick Breather: A little utility, just need to get to Supersonic Man.
- Supersonic Man: 2/3 points, increases movement speed and DPS when paired with kill skills in the Hitman Tree.
- Augments: Schadenfreude and Digital Distribution for survivability when the clone is out.
Under Cover Tree:
- Adrenaline: 5/5 points, the build would not work with Rough Rider, so something like the Stop-Gap or Re-Charger would be better in having better survivability and maximum cooldown reduction.
- Augments: Charged Relay helps with utility, really the only option anyway.
Hitman Tree:
- Violent Speed, Momentum, and Violence, Cool Hand: 5/5 points, all kill skills worth having to maximize movement and damage.
- Salvation: 3/5 points since you don’t really need to cap it for survivability.
- Drone Delivery: Depends on your choice, can probably put this into Salvation if you’re uncomfortable with only 6% life steal.
- Death Follows Close, Seein’ Red: Mid and capstone, makes kill skills activate with and last as long as our action skills.
As for gear, having more cooldown reduction is a must, and depending on your preferred gear, maybe +mag size and reload speed.
My current build features:
- an Anointed Hellwalker with +75% gun damage after swapping with my clone for a short time
- an Anointed Butcher with +100% weapon damage at action skill end for a short time
- 9-Volt/AAA against shields
- one weapon slot for a Laser-Sploder, change elements accordingly to whatever the enemies around are weak to
- Re-Charger with +movement speed when full
- Storm Front or MIRV Radiation Hex grenade
- A purple mod with +3 Donnybrook and +31% shotgun damage, +31% cooldown reduction
- Snowdrift artifact with +14% reload speed and +40% magazine size
I usually rock the 9-Volt and Laser-Sploder for mobs, and switch over to either Hellwalker or Butcher for bosses and badasses. The stacked cooldown reduction and using the shield over the drone makes it so that whenever an action skill ends, the other is available.
Let me know of any thoughts regarding the build!