Suggestions for Buffing Zane's damage output

Borderlands 3 Zane the Operative
#1

At this point, we all know Zane is in a somewhat disappointing state (Heavy on the somewhat). Now I’m not saying he’s weak or unplayable, but when compared to other characters, he’s just not as impactful as most think he should be, especially with a specialized build. I don’t mean to take away from Zane, or rant about him. I love him, and just want him better.

I’ve been thinking of ways we can specifically buff/rework his existing skills that will improve his current playstyles while expanding others to allow him more flexibility and power with his skills. I’ve thought of two skills, which define the builds that utilize the Hitman tree. The problem right now, is two-fold. The first problem is these skills are very powerful, but very situational. They can increase Zane’s damage a ton, but pigeon-hole him into a specific playstyle with them. Also, they are not synergistic, so players often have to choose either-or, or choose a specific playstyle to lean on the strengths of one, while the other’s strengths are barely utilized. I propose changes to buff both skills on their own, as well as make them viable for multiple playstyles, reducing their situational usage and allowing them to be synergistic with eachother.

First: Violent Momentum- The scaling on this skill can be very significant with huge movement speed increases such as slides and sprinting but the base amount is too low for the scaling to matter enough as it’s a multiplier of the base bonus. I suggest this skill should have its base doubled to 40% at 5/5 instead of 20%. This will help Zane have much more impactful damage with regular moving, and will make sliding/sprinting skills and movement speed bonuses make him truly feel like him moving fast makes his damage increase a lot.

Next: Playing Dirty- This skill is very strong for low rate of fire, low projectile count weapons but tends to fall away very quickly with weapons that have higher rates of fire. I propose that we allow this skill to stack its effect up to three times so that with full stacks you can have up to triple the amount of shots to have an extra projectile, and to get rid of the chance for extra projectile stuff and instead change it to how many shots can add an extra projectile. So 1/5 gets 1, 2/5 2 and so on. This will let the skill be useful right away for low rof, high damage per shot weapons, and also scaling up gives it more impact for higher rof weapons, with over-leveling allowing for more than 5 shots to be buffed within a single stack.
This should allow smg users who invest heavily in this skill to have nearly a full magazine with double projectiles and when played right could potentially keep the buff up through an entire firefight. This paired with the Violent Momentum buff would dramatically increase damage with smgs and other high rate of fire weapons while also giving Zane a unique capability to get more projectiles out of every weapon he fires (he does this already but this will make it much more worthwhile for the investment on high rof weapons).
This also would make the lower rof weapons have more consistent damage output with guaranteed procs on each kill and extra stacks ensuring they get to have this buff up at any time. At the same time with Violent Momentum being in a much better place, even the sniper Zanes could benefit and create a very high skill, high reward playstyle with fast moving, pinpoint accurate, hipfire sniping.

While sure there are other areas where Zane’s damage could be buffed, I think it’s safe to say the majority of players use one or both of these skills because they define their builds. I think these skills with these buffs would place Zane in a far more comfortable position in terms of damage output for himself, so that when all of his bugged utility skills get fixed, he’ll be considered right in line with the other characters with fairly unique playstyles not emulated by the other characters.

#2

And almost imossible to hit something. You have to move to get the bonus. Think about it. Bosses with great hit boxes ok, but regular mobs?!! This is not the DC Universe, where you play THE FLASH.

You love SMG! With high damage output? Try an Adapting Sleeping Giant with that skill.
The Adaptive version has two pallets. Needs two bullets per shoot. +10% crit damage. Very good base damge for an SMG. 396x2 . So round about 4000 DMG with the proc. Keep in mind, that skill is useful, when you have to eliminate a mass of mobs. In boss fights, where you have not so much adds it is not so important. It can be in arenas, with all the waves. Agree! But when your targeting is good and you will keep up that proc with that SMG. Every mobs is down with that kind of DMG. So I guess every one will find a weapon for his needs in that game. Your skills must match to your equipment in that game.

I disagree in a general way that Zane does not enough damage and he needs buffs. I am very satisfied with him. I am play with Barrier and DigiClone. Damage output is ok and he will stand for ever. Barrier is great in boss fights. When you play solo and pick up the barrier you can still move and has still the benefits from Violent Momentum. In group the
barrier together with All-Rounder is great.
One thing I want recommend everyone who gets 50 , start with the Healer Tree with your sentinel points. Go down to the end. It is so great! Skill 5 in this tree is great with a fast loading shield and the skill Hearty Stock from Zane.

#3

4000 damage barely dents a mayhem 3 mob and is less than a third what many other characters can do with similar weaponry. Picking up the barrier halves its damage multiplier so it should be done as little as possible, unless you’re using a fast moving build which wants survivability, not to mention only two augments work when holding the barrier which are all-rounder and deterrence field. Look, I’m not saying Zane’s worthless and unplayable. Believe me, I’ve found ways to make him work, and work well, but the game plays best when we have parity between the different characters so they all are on similar playing fields with the other. This also allows Gearbox to balance content better so that no one class is significantly struggling with new content just because it’s not on the same power level.
Why do you think they’re nerfing some parts of other characters’ kits and buffing others? They want each class to have well-defined roles, and multiple playstyles within. That’s all I want with Zane.

And who said a fast-moving build shouldn’t be in this game? This isn’t DC Universe, It’s BORDERLANDS, where stupidly crazy playstyles abound. Not to mention, multiple playstyles per character too. Lilith in BL1 literally walked into enemies to kill them, Krieg set himself on fire, Zer0 could one-shot bosses when lining a bunch of enemies up, or he could do tragic amounts of damage with a single melee. Why shouldn’t Zane be able to run around at high speeds like Sonic the hedgehog to get crazy damage? Don’t discourage fun, crazy playstyles… Always encourage them. That’s the point of Borderlands.

#4

Ok, got your points better now. I will not say, I accept it 100%. When you love it to play like that it is your right to ask for. And for someone who wants not to move so fast can invest less points in Violent Momentum.

I want not say the SMG is perfect, but I think it is a good compromiss for someone who loves the play style from Zane and SMGs.

1 Like
#5

Yeah, I’m not saying I want only smgs to be the most powerful weapons for him. And you’re right, there’s definitely a few other options to expand upon his playstyles so that he doesn’t have to move fast to do more damage. Playing Dirty with this setup would still allow lower rof weapons to get their power. It just would scale a lot better with higher rof weapons is all. But yes, definitely other areas could be looked at so Zane doesn’t have to run around super fast to get damage. I just want those two playstyles to be made stronger, and then can be looked at as the baseline for all the other playstyles he can have.

#6

there is so much more that needs to be done mate. i believe they took the wrong route with violent speed+momentum as a whole concept. but cool hands and violent violence need to do much more, honestly fixing dmg output is the elast of concerns you just change numbers on synchro donny and violent momentum and you are there but other skills, gosh they need to do what they are advertised to be doing and clone works much more works than fl4k’s a.i lul

#7

I agree, a lot of his more broken skills are a problem. But let’s be honest, most of us are gathering up every damage passive Zane has, and still feeling underwhelmed unless we’re doing very specific builds. Synchro is cool, but having action skills out all the time shouldn’t be the only source of damage for Zane. Also, buffing additive skills is only going to begin cutting into diminishing returns. I think before we do that and potentially have a situation where Zane’s buffs to Synchro and Donnybrook are not enough for high rof weapons, but with low rof weapons and Playing Dirty, snipers become super powerful. I just don’t think Zane’s main source of multiplicative damage should be as specific with the weapons it caters to. It’ll create balance problems down the line where one build is completely broken, and the other is barely powerful enough.

Maybe it’s more of a problem that Zane only has one passive that buffs multiplicative damage as innately and powerfully as Playing Dirty does… (yes you and I both know of CB, TotL, and barrier, but these are piddly in comparison to Playing Dirty) But I don’t know if GB wants to go that dramatic with changes and overhaul him entirely so he can have another multiplicative passive as powerful as that, on both ends. Regardless, I feel if we leave Playing Dirty in the state it is, it’s going to be problematic down the line with balance concerns where a multiplicative skill is breaking one set of weapons, but the rest of the additive damage bonuses are still not enough for the rest of the weapons at the same time.

#8

gbx hs that problem because they wanted a character with two action skills, but you lose so much withotu nades that they have to jam nade skiills where you could have good passives or actives, i mean zane has what 4 nade skills? and he is a no nade character… lul

#9

That’s a very good point. Aside from Synchro, Donnybrook, Double Barrel, and Trick of the Light, Zane has no true dps boosters in Doubled Agent because of how many skill slots are taken up by grenade-boosting skills. And Double Barrel and Trick of the Light are situational, not guaranteed sources of damage. Not to mention because we’re forced to take those skills, we’re effectively being forced to take certain skills that are fairly wasteful to be able to get down to stuff like Trick of the Light and Double Barrel. That’s definitely a problem all on its own, but fixing that requires entire overhauls of his character as a whole. Might be too much to ask for right now.

#10

well thankfully one of our community badasses @DemoniteBL is also playing zane and he has some voice that could be heard of, trust me no gbx balancing staff is gonna look up what me and you have to say :smiley: so hopefully once demo gets to late game maybe him and derch can get a reasonable word across. Before then i am ready to ingest another character as a working man i still have 3 more chars to go :smiley: so i can wait.

1 Like
#11

Yeah. I don’t necessarily expect Gearbox to necessarily see this post. I just try to get stuff out on these forums so hopefully someone who holds weight sees it, and takes it and starts talking about it. So long as we start having good conversations about this stuff, the better the ideas come and the more chance for our suggestions to gain traction.

#12

I think, he needs that skills. Nades are important part in damage for each character. In early game I leveled Zane with only one action skill and used nades on the other hand. In late game you can not throw nades, when you use two action skills. Your action skills has to do it for you to keep up your damage. I like the design of Zane. It´s different from the other characters. I think the best choice for zane are self searching grenades.

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#13

nobody said he doe not need those skills , i said because he needs those skills he does not have room for any more passives. yes you can take out bad skills like ignore bullet or damage resistence and turn them into dps skills but generally it is hard to throw in more dps for zane because of design philosophy and gbx is shy on hitman values. poor reload speed poor dmg output through violent violence etc… you can make drones dmg go through the roof and that is it lul but that kind of “fix” would only make some kids happy.

again gbx has to account for when DFC gets 2/1 aka boosted by classmod values will rise on donybrook and violent violence significantly. character is in a tough spot to be fixed without breaking.

#14

You want a meaningful dps buff to Zane? The answer is… Cold Bore… Cold Bore… Cold Bore.

Cold Bore could be an always on +30% cryo damage bonus multiplier and Zane would still be lacking behind the other vault hunters. But, an always on passive bonus would be lazy and boring.

Make Cold Bore a kill skill, where Zane gets +30% cryo damage bonus for 8 seconds at 5/5. Let it be boosted by death follows close and activated by seeing red.

Now you have just given Zane a meaningful damage multiplier in the first row that allows Zane players who want to spec into Barrier and Clone to still access it.

If you think this would suddenly make Zane OP, go play Moze and see what OP really is.

2 Likes
#15

I’ve had enough of these kill-based builds, seriously

1 Like
#16

They should make it on weapon swap for 5 seconds or until reload or something. The same with playing dirty.

#17

Uh until you run into an anointed. They need to nerf them so cryo at least does damage.

1 Like
#18

Which shows that giving Zane a 30% bonus cryo damage multiplier on kill would not make him OP. It wouldn’t make a difference vs anointed or other cryo immune enemies.

Unless gearbox decided to give Zane a mod that made all badasses/anointed/bosses be treated as normal enemies by Zane so that 30% multiplier works against all enemies… But nah, they’d just give that mod to Flak.

#19

I know bosses are immune to freezing, but to cryo damage as well?

#20

today i rearched the end game finally and steamrolled all arenas without reloading any modifiers. only content i need to go now is this slaughter shaft or whatever. i swear if it will also be easy af, i dno what i will do to these people.