I want to preface this by saying that Zane is BY FAR my favorite character.
I think Zane’s fundamental weakness is that he doesn’t do anything better than what any other hunter can do. I see there is a potential focus on Cryo in Zane’s design scheme but Zane doesn’t do anything DAMAGE wise to capitalize on that synergy. He’s good at freezing but what damage potential does freezing provide that Zane benefits from? 3x Melee Damage?
For example, Why does Amara want things to be caught in her elements? Because her elemental damage is higher than the other vault hunters. Why does Moze want to do splash damage. Because her splash damage is higher than the other vault hunters, Why does Flak want to do crit damage? Because his crit damage is higher than the other vault hunters. Why does Zane want to do cryo damage? Because it makes his weak action skills last longer?
3 out of 4 vault hunters has a simple 2 fold design.
–Make it easy to apply their class damage.
–Make their class damage hit harder
Zane only has the first step. Cryo freezing is easy to apply…
Zane needs more abilities like Refreshment. He gains life Steal off of Frozen Enemies. That’s great(very far down the tree for no reason but still). He gets NO damage benefit to freezing enemies at all. Capitalizing on frozen targets is what zane should be doing. Why doesn’t he have the ability to do more damage to frozen enemies. Why can’t he apply a unique cryo damage over time? One that is stronger than what other VH’s can do. He has a class mod that applies a status effect on enemies frozen. That would be great if his status effects actually hurt like Amara’s does. Why does he have a class mod that makes him a far less effective version of Amara??? Grenade Zane right? Moze can do grenades better than Zane.
Cryo based Zane does no more damage with cryo than any other character(amara comparison)
kill skill zane does no more damage with kill skill than anythother character(flak comparison)
Grenade Zane does no more damage with splash damage than anyother character(moze comparison)
Electric Zane is a joke
Melee Zane is a Gimmick
The master of none design scheme has gone too far.
I’ll be honest I don’t see why Clone Zane isn’t just a direct copy of zane damage wise. The AI alone would balance the clone. The Drone needs stronger augments. It’s radiation and electric augments tickle. The shield tree needs to give a damage benefit to freezing enemies. cooldown refreshing isn’t enough.
This is a good point. I’m sure someone will be along soon with a smug one liner about how Zane is good and you are bad, but you are not incorrect.
The problem here though is that Zane is our generic character, jack of all trades master of none, and this time the concept works. Wilhelm and Axton were supposed to be this class in their respective games, but they were a lot stronger than they probably should’ve been and what they did they did better than anyone. This time around we have a character who truly is the master of none, well except for cryo, and I think that’s okay.
Though we may all be proven wrong when his non-functional skills are turned on. That is the main reason why I don’t want to see too many buffs to Zane yet.
I’m not sure, but his kit feels like it is thought around atlas and the old cryo mechanics. Zane would be better with the following.
Cryo used to buff critical damage and explosives, which would be splash damage now.
So suddenly the barrier tree works for itself and grenades, out of the clone tree, would make a lot more sense.
Furthermore if feel like the Hitman speed build was made with atlas in mind. But the tracker mechanic is very lackluster. If that would work better you could combine all of that together and it would be freaking awesome and would support the other classes even better.
So there is a legendary artifact called the Rocket Boots. I got one to drop the other day that has a +50% Cryo chance and a +35% “damage vs. frozen” benefit. It also has bonus SMG damage and roughly 2% health regeneration, which is nice. I run this artifact pretty much all the time for mobbing and it works great.
My point in raising all this is that it seems like Zane could have used something like this artifact in his skill tree. That is, a skill that boosts the actual damage against frozen enemies or enemies that are affected by a cryo DOT. I know Zane has a fair few cryo skills, but I think this type of skill would really help him be the cryo specialist, kind of like Aurelia was in TPS.
I feel like the devs were trying to make Zane the “cryo character” because they gave him some of the skills that both Jack and Aurelia had in TPS, but they simply failed to take it far enough.
This is not a weakness, just one thing that would make Zane stronger.
Green tree capstone should be removed all together or made into a separate shield augment you can choose.
CCC needs to be the capstone with the removal of the health and shield requirement to be full for it to procc action skill reset.
The only other change i would make would be to switch Boom Enhance with Double Barrel and make Boom Enhance be able to consume more grenades for an even bigger buff.
The clone needs Double Barrel. It is integral to his character design. It takes a crazy amount of weapon swapping, timing and positioning to keep your clone shooting with the right weapon.
The issue with atlas is that it’s mostly normal bullets which are OFTEN debuffed in Mayhem Mode. If some atlas guns had element effects it would be VERY good. But i completely agree. Zane with the old cryo effects would be an amazing character. I wonder if he was the first vault hunter designed so thats why he works will with old stuff
EXACTLY. I have the Same artifact. And I have it on all the time. It’s a necessity. and It’s only a blue artifact. It SHOULD have been a skill. It makes sense as a skill. In fact, the artifact in question literally doesn’t make a lick of sense on any other character than Zane.
The rocket boots special effect is launching a missile while sliding. What you actually mean is the ice breaker prefix. But yeah that’s very necessary for every cryo build, that’s very true!
Very interesting. Hadn’t thought of it like that. Makes a lot of sense. I don’t really use cryo guns too much. But this kind of Zane sounds fun. Thanks.
I think I got lucky and got a really good legendary one. This artifact makes the Night Hawkin absolutely fantastic. The extra SMG damage on the artifact is great, and the health regen on top of all that means I stay even more healthy and in the fight. Survival skills are always critical to DPS. YOu can’t kill stuff if you’re dead. LOL
I am pretty sure that I got mine from Graveward, but you could also try farming Mother of Grogans?
maxageddon
(There's safety in numbers. There's Safety in pins.)
#12
Ice Breaker really only benefits in mobbing situations too. It really doesnt do much against bosses. If it was updated to work with the slow as well as freeze, cryo Zane would be a bit more well rounded and viable
I may be confused about the name, but I am pretty sure you are correct that it is called “Ice Breaker Rocket Boots.” New game, sometimes though to know what is the prefix vs. the name of the item itself. I really like what they have done in BL3 with artifacts, lots more possible combinations of effects.
It’s weird because the unique effect is the second thing displayed, and the prefix is the first. Makes some kind of sense I guess, but we’re used to having the unique effect first.
But so would every other character that uses cryo and wears the Ice Breaker relic. Zane specifically could have that as one of his skills. This would be the same basic thing that they addressed in TPS where Aurelia’s ice shard applied the damage buffs to the affected enemy regardless of whether they were frozen. The number would not have to be that high, maybe even just a 20% buff to damage while an enemy was under a cryo DOT or frozen.
1 Like
maxageddon
(There's safety in numbers. There's Safety in pins.)
#16
Totally agree. It would just have to be a multiplicative bonus. That would even Zane out. Hell, even if the artifact did get updated to be more flexible, zane would still get the most use out of it due to brain freeze alone
The ice breaker artifact is a must have. But it cuts off alot of the better artifacts in the game, which is why id like it to be an actual skill. The fact that it is not a skill is an oversight. We have ALLLLL the tools to apply cryo and no damage mechanic to benefit off of it. It’s the equivalent of amara not doing stronger element damage then other VHs but having a bunch of ways to put status effects on people
Kill skill Zane just needs better Kill skills. It seems like GearBox balanced his kill skills with Death Follows Close in mind. But the double projectile and the fire rate kill skills are garbage. He literally has a reload kill skill. Why is this not just a passive?
Also alternatively I think Zane has the WORST damage based tree augments in the game.
Why is the digi clone tree augments so focused on defense when the shield tree is his defense tree? Why would I want to explode his clone earlier when the WHOLE point of ALL THREE of his trees is to keep his action skills up as long as possible???
Why is his defense shield tree his most damaging tree with the most gun damage?
Why is the sntnl so worthless as a actual action skill, I barely notice it’s doing anything? Why is there only 1 gun damage skill in his entire kill skill tree and it’s based off movement ?!?!?!