In Borderlands 2, you had incentives to use lower rarity (non-legendary) mods; i.e a Blue Class Mod would boost unique skills that it alone boosted and/or it would boost it at a higher number than even legendary mods (+6 in a skill when the cap for Legendary was at most +5).
Purples had more skills to boost, with unique stat bonuses that weren’t found on other mods (like +30% Explosive Damage etc)
Seeing as how the stat bonuses are random for all mods in BL3, what’s the incentive, other than just getting a better rng on a lower rarity mod, to use Blues or Purple mods?
I haven’t noticed anything special, but I might have missed something so if there is an obvious advantage my apologies.
To be honest it’s because they drop more frequently, have 3 purple mods I use for FL4K that vary from increasing certain skills to melt bosses and others that boost gun damage with certain guns I use for mobbing. I finally got 3 legendary mods to drop from farming Chupacabratch and Traunt, but I don’t use em as much since they boost skills outside my build. Really like the purples. At the start of the game I farmed the Sanctuary vending machine at Tannis’ place for hours trying to get a good roll on a mod. Got a few keepers.
I’ve been basing my choices off of what’s the bonus passive that the character gets. Besides Fl4k and Amara, but I have to wait for them to get to level 50 before I can give them the legendary class mods I found for them.
jmthsauer
("Barriers are for the weak. Or the tryhards"-Zane)
#4
Depends. At times they still might provide a better bonus. The actual stats on the class mods seem to be random, very much unlike in Borderlands 2, and class mods are only defined by the skills they boost.
Legendary class mods usually introduce a new effect or skill into your build but sometimes it’s just not good or doesn’t synergize with your build. Like, for instance, I’d say most purple COMs you can get for Zane are gonna be better than his legendary Shockerator, simply because the effect isn’t all that great and scales poorly.
But for the most part, you might just find that a generic mod boosts better skills than a legendary one.
so what I’m hearing is “RNG”. I specifically stated that better RNG is probably the only reason to use a lower rarity mod.
But you aren’t boosting unique skills (that I know of)
You aren’t getting more points into something above the norm.
The max bonus aren’t higher (that I know of)
Nothing.
The issue can be that Legendaries won’t boost skills you’re actually specced into and thus you can’t double up anything the way you want. So its a toss up between the Legendary effect and the skills that you want boosted. The utility is a little better overall though cause the mods now activate skills they give points to even if you haven’t invested in them, so if you do go with a Legendary for the effect you still get some net worth with new skills you may not have specced into directly.
Personally I wish some of the skill combos were a little more varied, half the ones for Amara are skills I don’t even use or see any real benefit to getting half specced with the mods themselves.
The rarity levels combined with RNG also affects how many skills pop up and how many points are allocated to them. So with Amara running a maxed elemental focus build, a purple Stormbringer with just the Tempest skill, but all 5 bonus points added wouldn’t give much utility, but it would essentially double all her Shock damage potential and give her 60% increased damage in all the other elements.
And for some of the skills that already max out at 3, getting one that drops with a 3 to that skill means you already hit double capacity with it, and still have 2 points in another skill or 1 point in two different skills. It all depends on which skills work for your build and whether you want to min-max or even out your development.