My wonky take on Zane (Rough Rider build)

Borderlands 3 Zane the Operative
#1

The point of this build is to use Rough Rider’s 0 shield to skip the shield recharge phase of Calm, Cool, Collected, and go straight to the good stuff. Mainly Action Skill Duration and Cool down reset, but if you need it that health regen is mighty nice.

I suggest an Infiltrator mod for the ~20% damage bonus at all times from having no shield. My mod has +2 to Like a Ghost, but if you can find a +3 with good mods… go for it.

Play style is simple(ish)
Drop clone with a badass gun in its hands (i recommend a cryo weapon for chance at self refresh) and try to keep it up as long as possible by freezing enemies and not getting pwnt.

Trees are as follows

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I quite enjoy the night hawkins as my personal cryo application weapon. It crits very nicely, and is very kind when it comes to aim.

I recommend a incendiary resist rough rider for obvious reasons, and damage reduction on your class mod, as well as a incendiary resist or elemental resist artifact.

I go with icebreaker otto idol for the damage to frozen targets, and the 18% health recovery on kill. 18% max health is HUGE with rough rider.

The first 5 skillpoints in the green tree are a total waste, however what you get out of green tree later on are worth those wasted points.

5% heatlh regen all the time is amazing
16% damage resist to last type is very nice
15% damage resists and converting elemental away from dreaded incendiary
-50% less being a human torch
and the coupe de grace is of course… cool calm collected.

Since you have no shields, ignore the first part, the skill will.
If you have any health damage you will get 3% MORE regen on top of your already decent regen numbers.
If you are at full health (with regen not tooo hard) you will reset action skill cool downs and DURATION.

I’ve seen a clone stay out for entire rounds of the slaughter shaft.

Anyway.
Thats my “zaney” take on zane.

Enjoy.

5 Likes
#2

Good build!
I just want to mention one contradictory thing and one maybe not optimal thing.
1 thing. You are stacking incendiary resistance and then convert all damage to physical nullifying your resistance. Additionally you now get more dmg from shock and corrosive because that would normally be less effective against you.

2 thing, like a ghost does not proc if you reset your skills with ccc and is not doing anything against what gets through your barrier, so I think it’s kinda pointless?

Apart from that, good work and keep it going!

#3

Actually the conversion to physical only happens AFTER a kill.
also it is not physical… it converts to untyped as far as i understand it.
Like a Ghost has a base level of effect and then MORE after a skill use.
Currently Like A Ghost gives me 10% base chance to ignore bullets.

#4

Ive been trying to make rough rider build work and surprisingly sacrificing 5 levels in undercover to get Rise to the Occasion has worked best. It gives insane, instant healing.

Has given me better survivability than 5 points in Salvation with a hellwalker.

#5

Ive read that rough rider didnt work for the skills that require 0 shield in BL3

#6

well it works for health regen in green tree from rise to the occasion.
it also has synergies with calm cool collected.

#7

Rough Rider does not work with skills or item mods that require depleted shields and Zane does not have any skill requiring depleted shields. I’d personally think that a rough rider build would be best using hitman and taking the damage reduction/health regeneration skills from Undercover, switching between Barrier and Clone have Kill Skills active all the time as I don’t see much advantages over a standard Cryo/Clone build, which should be superior.
If you want to make RR work, I would look if you basically can get damage reduction and health regeneration up to the levels of a Moze shield build.

#8

Hm, I don’t feel understood. Maybe I should try to get my points over again.
Yes, I know that it only happens after a kill, but since you are killing pretty frequently you have a high uptime on futility belt. Untyped damage, true damage I called it wrong, but thought it right. Doesn’t matter in this case though. You get more dmg from corrosive and shock and you don’t really benefit from your fire resistance if it’s on.

When or how long you get like a ghost doesn’t matter, because there will be no bullets getting through your barrier in the first place.

#9

RR is so wonky. But it seems to be working with the mod (or at least I felt the 10% speed increase) but any extra perks that roll on RR like reload or movement speed when depleted don’t work.

#10

thanks for the info

#11

What perk gives you reload and movement speed when depleted?

Is it confirmed that all of the Infiltrators perks work with RR?

#12

infiltrator does work with RR i tested this morning
reload/movement speed are from shield mods not perks
i hear reload speed does not work. movement speed does.

#13

I read in an Amara-Melee thread, that you can make rough-rider’s “depleted”-effects work if your equipted artifact gives you a portion of shield (like +1234 Shield) so that portion of shield gets depleted after you get damaged. After that that portion of shield never gets regenerated. So your “Shield” stays depleated and you can make the effects work.

Only read about that, can’t confirm yet, haven’t tested it yet.

#14

Just tested it. Thanks to violent momentum it’s quite easy to test (test if damage changes from a 10% run RR and a normal RR). Just switching to +shield mod does not work. It seems that the shields from +shield have to be depleted first for it to work which you can do by equipping another shield first, then + shield mod, then switch to RR and remove your shield (damage increased from 1585 to 1630 after that).
Changing regions keeps the bonus, when you start a new game, you start again with shields that can be depleted.
€: After shields have been depleted you can switch to another artifact and keep the bonus for your game’s duration (going to Sanctuary and back does not change it, only a new game).

2 Likes
#15

What skills would that work for zane that dont with rough rider?

#16

It works not on skills, but on extra ability of your shield like the +23% reload speed on adrenalin roughrider, or the +80% melee damage on raid roughrider, and so on…

#17

The only problem with this is that it makes cool calm collected never give health regen/ability cool down/duration reset as it will proc the shield regen with 0 regen on rough rider.

#18

Yes, that could happen, not shure how the mechanics in the background will work.

#19

I’ve tested it.
That IS how it works.

1 Like
#20

Thanks for doing this. So we learned both a bit of gearbox bl3 mechanics