Zane doesn't need buffs, he needs bugfixes

Borderlands 3 Zane the Operative
#1

And when I say bugfixes, I mean A LOT of bugfixes.

Read this and despair:


Credit to reddit user Inforgreen3

PS: I wondered if I should post this in the bug report thread, but I think this deserves a thread in the Zane section)

14 Likes
#2

Seconded. I already submitted a ticket to the 2k Support page.

2 Likes
#3

Awesome, the more we can shed on this the better.

#4

He still needs a buff in addition to bug fixes. I can solo Slaughter Shaft MH3 easily on my Amara but Zane cant even get past 2nd wave with great gear. A_Seagull been streaming his new Amara and its night and day vs Zane which he put way more time on.

#5

I don’t know if some of those are actually bugs or working as intended (skill descriptions are sometimes quite vague, allowing for different interpretations on what might be wai). Unfortunately not much information has been given how the tests were conducted. E.g.:
Damage resist from Futility Belt and Stiff Upper Lip. Was it tested with no shields or with shields? It is possible (and I’m quite interested to know how it actually works) that shields do not take reduced damage and/or that the resist only applies after damage to health has been taken. If it works this way Futility Belt and Stiff Upper Lip would be skills that might be more interesting for a Rough Rider build.
I did quite extensively test movement speed damage and movement speed and in my tests added movement speed directy increased Violent Momentums damage (+50% movement speed at level 5 violent momentum results in violent moment bonus of 30% (0.2*1,5) which is additive with most other damage bonuses).
Was Boom Enhance tested on Normal Difficulty without Mayhem Modifiers? It might be possible that the Clone might get an health increase depending on difficulty/Mayhem mode to let him scale (and not die instantly) which could be additive to Boom Enhance modifiers. Might be possible that the Clone even gets all the modifiers.

#6

agreed. the buffs don’t matter when crucial skills (and augments like shadenfreude) aren’t working. So many skills are just completely broken. it’s not the mechanics of how it’s supposed to be, they just literally do nothing. They don’t work.

#7

Ah, so this is why my level 50 Zane with great gear still blows…

1 Like
#8

If this is intended then it’s a pretty terrible skill. But putting that aside, yeah skill descriptions have been known to be vague but not this blatantly incorrect. Damage is damage, doesn’t matter what it hits. They should at least fix the skill description then.

Another utterly horse**** mechanic that has no precedent, and should be mentioned if it really works like that. More likely it’s bugged. People are also reporting that it doesn’t use 3 grenades even when it should.

How do you know, when half of his perks don’t work? All we have to go on is hyopthetics, nobody has tried an actually functioning Zane yet.

1 Like
#9

The Hitman skill tree should be renamed Jogger, rofl

#10

[quote]
If this is intended then it’s a pretty terrible skill. But putting that aside, yeah skill descriptions have been known to be vague but not this blatantly incorrect. Damage is damage, doesn’t matter what it hits. They should at least fix the skill description then.[/quote]

I would not say it would be blatantly incorrect. First thing to test would be if resistance does apply to shields or only to health. Then there is a chance that that Stiff Upper Lip just adds resistance when Zane is getting health damage (it’s worded “Whenever Zane gets damaged” which might imply health) but that resistance would still work on shields.
I did look up how it worked on Borderlands 2 (chances are that it’s the same in 3) but did not find anything on shield/health with resistance. But: Resistance worked that you increased you effective health. 50% resistance was 150% health or a about 30% DR. 100% resistance was 200% health or about 50% DR.

[quote]
Another utterly horse**** mechanic that has no precedent, and should be mentioned if it really works like that. More likely it’s bugged. People are also reporting that it doesn’t use 3 grenades even when it should.[/quote]

With increasingly harder enemies on Mayhem levels they would need some kind of scaling if they want pets to be viable in harder difficulties while not being OP on normal. So it would at least be a mechanic that could be intended.

#11

Lack of synergy between some of his skills compared to other classes. Kill skills should refresh on duration reset if you have capstone in Hitman or skills should be able to canceled. He has the worst anointed gear stats by far.

1 Like
#12

Can confirm Zane’s values are too low on annointed gear

2 Likes
#13

I think i must be the only person who feels like Zane plays really well generally. He’s not on the level of my Amara but nothing in the game so far has stopped him.

I do agree that he needs bug fixes (as do all the other VHs - half of Amara’s skills are glitched or totally non-functioning as well) but mostly i just think the hitman tree kill skills need a couple extra %s increase across the board and the clone needs to use weapons properly (incidentally he’s a fricking sniper with his default weapon, i often see streams of crits coming from him from across the map).

I think a big issue is that all his blue kill skills only do one thing - so just reload speed, just fire rate etc. and all at 5 points. Building him for kill skills is really expensive for skill points and other VHs get multiple boosts from a single power.

If Zane is the kill-skill character in B3, then make him THE kill-skill character - they should be powerful buffs that require you to manage your kills and action skill uptime to benefit from. For the life of me i can’t figure out why he got a nerf pre-launch, the numbers aren’t high enough even with Death Follows Close. In fact i’d say it’s a mandatory pick if you are taking any kill skills with Zane.

Also, everyone seems to say the drone is useless - but i love that little fella! I don’t expect him to kill anything on his own but he’s really good at irradiating/shocking/dropping grenades on everything and requires 0 attention from me, which works out!

#14

you are ar from alone champ :slight_smile: and yes sentinel is useful support and debuffer it just loses out to other AC’s on cool down but you can make it work.

#15

Zane is the worst offender sure, but every character has skills that just don’t work or work when, why and how they want to in my experience. Another giant offender i’ve noticed is Moze’s healing from grenades. You can be sitting there watching it tick away and you health will not be refilling so you just kinda sit there wtf it up while you wait to hopefully not die because your build isn’t working as it should/does other times. Add the mayhem modifiers to this and you get a game that feels entirely too inconsistent to feel good at any point sadly. Randomness i’d argue is worse than something being broken because if something always feels like crap, that’s cool but something feeling good then suddenly feeling very bad leaves you wondering wtf is going on?

1 Like
#16

Usain Bolt-Action

#17

But he is probably the best one to use those “on action skill end” annointed items. 100% damage bonus for example last 12 seconds. With cancelling clone you can have the bonus permanently, a barrier/clone switching build will have about 3 seconds inbetween.

#18

I mean Amara running cooldown can spam her skills and not have to wait a good 2 seconds to explode clone. Add in she has 200% weapon damage ones to stack. Honestly it’s a bad way to utilize that anointed perks. He needs more “while barrier/STNL is active increase weapon damage or crit damage” etc. Obviously the numbers could be tuned down.

#19

My Zane turned 50 today so I could compare alot of different builds to my other characters (all 50, well geared).

Honestly… I like the playstyles, but he just does half of the damage the other vault hunters can dish out. And no, I’m not talking about gimmicky builds, ele projector, lyuda and what not.
I really enjoyed the speedy kill skill build tho, it feels quite tanky which is nice. But all the sustain won’t do, if the enemies don’t die.

#20

Hi guys, first post. Sorry if I’m repeating old news but I’ve noticed with my Zane when I hit L1, all my 8 kill skills would line up at the bottom. I think it was 8? there were no spaces left. Now when I press L1 I only seem to get 6? is this a bug or a nerf or something? I definitely haven’t changed any skill points around.

Cheers!