Sorry my fellow Zane mains. We can’t catch a break
Cryo Zane’s entire kit was nerfed or made less accurate today as a result of today’s hotfix. Every good cryo weapon you can think of was nerfed either damage wise or accuracy wise.
Lucian’s Call got an accuracy and handling nerf. Wasn’t even that damaging. It was good for ammo efficiency considering Zane has no innate ammo regen.
Laser Sploder was needlessly nerfed for no reason. The rockets have increased interval. Didn’t even see this out performing other ARs. If it was, it was marginally.
Crossroads also nerfed. One less projectile means a 25% damage reduction.
Hex grenades probably deserved the nerf but they were still the best cryo grenades in the game.
Literally all we have left is the night hawkin and the trevonator as our unerfed cryo weapons. I’m not saying their isn’t alternative cryo weapons, but as it stands the nerf to the best cryo weapons in the game is an indirect nerf to Zane most popular kit.
The digi clone health buff helps, but doesn’t solve Zane biggest problem. Damage.
The infinity cryo pistol got a 40% damage increase. That might be good for Clone Zane. That’s about it
Of course it is. Crossroad was not nerfed by 25%, you have to reload less now (which takes a long ass time on crossroads) so I would assume more like 20% or so which is absolutely reasonable. The gun was overperforming ALOT. Lasersploader I have no idea how harsh the nerf is. Does not seem too bad to me but maybe I´m wrong. Hex grenades had it coming, and I actually do not think their freezing potential is nerfed by this? I´m not exactly sure how status effects work so again, that might be wrong.
I use all those weapons (except lucians call) and agree with the nerfs for the most part. It highly doubt it makes a drastic difference. Aside from that they have said multiple times that they are looking at Zane’s performance and thinking of ways to bring him up to speed, so I would not get my knickers in a twist over this.
I think Zane’s Cryo kit will be fine, honestly. Cryo Laser-Sploder should still do work, the nerf doesn’t seem that harsh. While the huge nerf to the Hex grenade is a bummer, look out for the MIRV Widowmaker with an insane amount of Cryo efficiency (I think I have one with 1300% efficiency, I have to check). Looks awesome with the exploding icicle particles on the field.
Also, don’t forget about Double Barrel Digi-Clone using the Scourge rocket launcher (if you can find a Cryo variant, it’s even deadlier for Cryo Zane).
Another really good shotgun for cryo zane that I’ve been enjoying is the kill’o’the wisp. The orb can crit pretty frequently so it’s good for brain freeze and shield stripping. And with playing dirty stacks and cold bore swapping it makes it pretty good. I freeze lesser mobs pretty well, and at least start the brain freeze stacks with it when entering an area. Just as a heads up though, the double variant doesn’t gain the additional projectile from playing dirty.
I don’t like being forced to use rocket launchers to keep up. It sucks man, to lose damage when the non of the nerfs are even because of your character. Zane wasn’t close to OP with most of these weapons. I agree about the Hex tho. I did it for cryo efficiency(mine had 500+%) more so than damage.
Ironically I’ve been working on builds that don’t use these weapons and then they get inevitably nerfed.
Came up with some good stuff that I’ll share later, but for now some comments on the nerfs:
Laser sploder sucked anyways, TBH. It was a lot of fun in normal/non Mayhem but for me fell off a cliff in TVHM M3, especially in heavy spawn.
Lucian’s Call didn’t do damage anyways, unfortunately now it’ll be extremely difficult to hit anything accurately especially while moving without Nerves of Steel / Confident Competence.
Flakker change was probably a buff for Zane since now it has a 1 shot mag.
Crossroads RIP. I still didn’t think it did nearly enough damage with a lack of +dmg mods on Zane, but now it’s not worth looking at.
Hex damage was absurd to the point in which you literally didn’t need to use anything else and I’ve noted this many times. It’s functionality is unchanged for freezing things (in any element) but now it won’t singlehandedly carry a build.
Thread doesn’t mention Cutsman, but that nerf is huge as it was one of the best guns in the game IMO and extremely valuable for moving and shooting. It probably still does a ton of d amage because it’s a good gun that hits multiple times and expands in flight.
Infinity got a buff, can’t imagine it doesn’t suck now, but worth a try.
I agree and disagree. I agree with your statements regarding the laser sploder, lucians call, and crossroads. They weren’t over powered in the slightest. They were just top tier cryo weapons that made Zane the 4th best vault hunter by a reasonable amount instead just plain freaking terrible. I don’t care what anyone says but Axton was literally NEVER this weak. Axton had an underpowered action skill but his actual trees had damage in them. Zane doesn’t have that. Torgue Axton and Grenade Axton, and Tediore Action were no joke.
I think 2xHP on clone only helps ONE build. Which is the drone and clone build. Anyone using barrier would just stick their clone in barrier and be fine**. It’s huge for one playstyle**. But it doesn’t bring Zane in line with other vault hunters at all. Not even a little bit
I’m using my own unique “caster” Zane build and every single buff in this patch just made my build even more powerful.
Cryo weapons at end game weren’t great anyways unless you weren’t going into CCC, but if you were they were worse than redundant since they didn’t help with anointends at all which are the things you really need to burst.
Grenade Zane works fine still, if not better with Big Boom Blaster buff meaning you can spec down Undercover tree and still use grenades instead of going Double Agent. Tedidore Zane isn’t a thing because of no ammo regen, but Tedidore Moze is probably wacky. Torgue Zane got buffed indirectly through the Flakker “nerf.”
Also Torgue Zane was always a thing with the 100% chance to shoot 2 projectiles with Playing Dirty which probably more than doubles your damage with Gyrojets since they stack percentage wise with the number of jets before reload. If you were to get an anointment on any gyrojet gun that is swapping with digi-clone reloads weapon/regens ammo to mag (worse but still functional) you would be able to stack damage infinitely and without glitching.
everything is fine tbh just some OP guns toned down that still will do the dmg, people forgot how to ADS in this damn game because everything was so hipfire happy.
Grenade Zane doesn’t do anymore damage with Grenades then anyother character man. He’s not even really throwing them more often. Your relying on a kill skill and sntnl to throw it. Grenade Zane is a less damaging, less accurate, and less efficient version of moze.
My main build is grenade Zane. You DO NOT run out of grenades, ever. You can throw them indefinitely. I am actually working on a new build that doesn’t spam them as much, because if you are using the correct grenades/item combinations, you don’t need to spam them forever.
With this one you run and gun as well as any other build if you were to choose to, but more importantly you get grenades every single time you activate an action skill.
Seeing Red activates all kill skills when you activate an action skill. Death Follows Close increases the effect and duration of kill skills. Pocket Full of Grenades is a kill skill.
Digi-clone for me is on like a 5 second CD. You don’t even need to build around it, but you could, and every time you activate it you get a huge buff to Zane + grenades.
You don’t even ever need to fire your gun. Get Grenade/AoE/elemental damage on an Artifact, Splash/Grenade damage on a class mod.
ALSO the clone can be dopplebangered to do AoE splash damage, which scales off your splash damage from items.
Trick of the Light offers as flat 18% bonus damage as shock to enemies that aren’t targeting Zane. If you drop your clone in the middle of a mob with Which One’s Real? and TP out, you activate Trick of the Light
everyone but amara can do infinite grenades and they have bonuses that make them better at it.
unrelated comment why is everyone saying the flakker nerf is a buff for zane? how does that even make sense to some one
sammantixbb
(I guess no one goes here anymore)
#18
Three Flakkers and and Omni Loader with full points in Cold Bore.
Hey, has anyone else tried The Ice Queen Jakobs Sniper? I got one last night and it WRECKED and I’m not even a Cryo build. That and my SNTL Cryo Unforgiven were chaining Overkill on Athenas and it was beautiful.
All these whines about cryo weapons when the biggest pain to Zane are the anointed immune to cryo damage, and both hex and fire flaker, fire laserexploder, and fire butcher were gutted with nerfs so fighting anointed will be even more wretched.
Westergun is a strong Maliwan smg that you can get in any variety of 2 elements of your choice and scales off of elemental / splash / smg damage, which makes it potentially super powerful with some god rolls. Long musket is very good, but only against flesh, which anointeds are.
