Let's complete a respectable survey for Gearbox every skill AS and augment break down

[Hexxusz0r (Resident inZane)]

I will write down my own version here and modify it if the consensus is reached around any of the skills or augments.

What we are looking into:
1.Is the skill not working as advertised?
2.Is the skill working but the numbers are simply too low?

same for AC and augments. I want to have sort of respectable list of what GBX could look into and maybe communicate it through some of the interested community badass or DMing noelle or other gbx member.

Keep your points short sweet and to the point. at the end of your post you may also suggest your character fix idea if it won’t be a thesis.

SNTNL- idea is good, could be a little faster could have it’s cool down not so long

violent speed- this skill is fine.

Cold bore-this skill is fine. but could be nice if it was first 2 shots at least

Violent momentum- this skill is fine. the concern being adding any speed on top of base movement speed does not give big boosts, discuss.

Winters drone-this augment is fine. but damage needs to be checked for UVHM viability or at laest utility wise (how effectively it can freeze)

Cool Hand- values are too low passive relaod speed boost is almost non existent and for a kill skill reload boost it is laughable as well even with DFC +25%.

Drone delivery- this skills is fine.

Salvation-this skill is fine.

Bad dose- needs a fix does not do damage also we do not see how it buffs zane, i would like to know numbers on this thing. But damage wise it does ■■■■ all.

Death follows close- this skill is fine.

Static field-this augment is far from being a good option, does not do enough to help amp shields does not do enough to damage enemy shields.

Boomsday-this augment is too weak

Violent violence- this skill is fine. but if in UVHM there are no class mods that give +3 to +5 boosts to skills it’s values are then too low for high tier kill skill.

Playing dirty-this skill is fine. but it’s interaction with overkill has to be looked into. i mean it is cool and all that zane can make powerful gun shoot twice for price of one. but amra can make do with just 1 bullet and moze can shoot infinitely. so why do we invest so much for so little?

Almighty Ordnance- too weak, drone is already weak and the idea of resetting it’s duration with orderence barrage while cool does not work in the field.

Good Misfortune-this skill is fine.

Seein red- this capstone is fine. could however provide some more boost to kill skills.

Digi-Clone-this AC is fine as long as the A.I. goes in games it is derpy but a cool concept

Synchronicity-this skill is fine. probably should be way more powerful to bring zane up a notch.

Praemunitus-this skill is fine but round up the numbers. =roundup pls

Borrowed Time:-this skill is fine. could easily be 3 pointer while praemunitus being 5

Binary System-this augment is too weak

Dannybrook:-this skill is fine.

Fractal Frags-this skill is fine.

Duct Tape Mod-this skill is fine. maybe cd is too long.

Schadenfreude-this augment is fine.

Quick Breather-this capstone is fine.

Which One’s Real?-discuss, i can not confirm from my practice that it even effects enemies targeting choices

Dopplebanger-this skill is fine. cool idea, works dmg must be looked at.

Pocket Full of Grenades:-this skill is fine from what i heard by nade zane players but i am not sure.

Old-U-this skill is fine in idea but it simply does not respond to player input. needs to be looked at too many times i keep pressing the button but it won’t work.

Supersonic Man-this skill is fine.

Digital Distribution:-this skill is fine.

Like a Ghost- it has same problems as cool hand absolutely garbage value per investment being tier 5 at that too… it is implied that you shall stack this i am willing to hear opinions if it ever works for anyone.

Boom. Enhance.-this skill is fine? it should consume max avalable grenades every time AC is deployed to be it’s strongest self.

Trick of the Light-This skill is fine.

Double Barrel:-this skill needs work but i digress i do not believe in ever having good A.I. on it.

Barrier-this AC is fine.

Adrenaline-this skill is fine.

Hearty Stock-this skill is fine.

Ready for Action-this skill is fine by bl3 standards.

Charged Relay-this augment is fine but does not work when picking up barrier ( did not confirm myself)

Brainfreeze-this skill is fine.

Stiff Upper Lip:-this skill is fine.

Rise to the Occasion- this skill is fine but kinda weak

Nanites or Some ■■■■■-this augment is fine. does not work when barrier is picked up (did not confirm myself)

Confident Competence-this skill is fine. imo should give bigger gun dmg boost.

All-rounder-this augment is fine.

Redistribution-this augment is fine. does not work when picked up (did not confirm myself)

Really Expensive Jacket-this skill is fine.

Best Served Cold:- i have no idea what this skill is for does not do damage and does not seem to freeze

Futility Belt- i have no idea what it does to this day. if you have a kill skill up and get shot by cryo you still get slowed. so it only converts the received damage number to non elemental? how does it interact with mayhem modifiers. i have no clue.

Deterrence Field-this augment is fine. damage numbers should be looked at for UVHM it needs to scale just like bad dose.

Refreshment-this skill is fine. stupid strong tbh

Calm, Cool, Collected:-this skill is fine. GOAT skill.

Nerves of Steel:-no idea about this one i’d never pick it because every heavy gun is already still hipfire friendly.

Distributed Denial-this skill is fine.

My suggestion for bringing zane’s dmg up is giving more impact to syncrhonicity and confident competence and reward zane for having both ac deployed at the same time and still being at full shields. if i had to pull numbers out of my ass base synchronicity should be 30% if not more and CC on full shield should be 30% if not more. this is purely coming from the point of view if every other skill and augment was fixed and butter smooth. other things to be done is making his barrier faster on both deploy and pickup and allowing him to deploy his skills mid air;sliding;jumping . make it possible to deploy two action skills in 1 second succession. Apart from all this stuff somehow his conditional damage should be redone, for example violet momentum being 10% when not moving just passive (on full investment 5/5) synchro being passive 10% at least even if AC’s are not deployed. sort of the way cool hand works lower value passive and higher value when kill skill is on.

Zane has literally no dmg in ffyl.

I want to modify this list so that only problems are left and pass it on somehow to the devs also i will select best buffing ideas and maybe sth will actually be approved.

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Please mods move this to the zane category did not mean to post in general discussion.

**

[Superfr34k (SteJay)]

I feel like every buff the clone tree grants you should be granted to the clone as well.
So the ones that are missing are synchronicity and trick the light.

Duct Tape Mod- keep the cooldowns and the chance and makes it proc on every shot or shorten the cooldown and keep the rest to make ist viable

Drone delivery - could activate your kill skills, a bit of redundancy would be nice, in particular looking at playing dirty

Death follows close - add the ability to have your kill skills being activated by kills your allies did but you damaged before

Seeing red - the name of this skill brought me to the idea that it could activate all your kill skills permanently during ffyl additionally

Hm. Done for now
Good thread!

[Hexxusz0r (Resident inZane)]

i like the ffyl suggestion zane is dogshit in that department.

[Maximum_Jackson (Vault Hunter)]

Great thread mate, nice one! Overall, I thoroughly agree with the vast majority of what has already been mentioned. I won’t comment on most of the augments/skills I agree with, but here are my additions:

HITMAN TREE

Violent Speed + Violent Momentum:
Both skills work okay, but damage really needs to scale a lot better/bigger between the two. There should be a far bigger payoff for getting a higher speed (thus higher aiming skill cap) playstyle to work effectively, especially as you already lose all most/all of these bonuses while in FFYL or if cryo’d. Should be high risk, high reward; at the moment it’s more high risk, better-than-nothing reward.

Cold Bore:
Works fine, numbers okay, but Zane has no other weapon swapping synergies whatsoever. Activation should be switched to something reload oriented, like “first shot in every magazine”, or “on reload”, and some attention given to Cool Hand for synergy.

Cool Hand
Works fine, incredibly weak bonuses. Values should be almost doubled to make the points worthwhile and/or comparable with other VHs; for both the base and kill skill buffs.

Drone Delivery
Works fine, 15 second cooldown seems excessive, especially as grenades are already fairly weak damage-wise, and it’s too slow/unpredictable to be used as a reliable utility option (ie. healing. shield stripping, etc).

UNDER COVER TREE

Confident Competence
Works fine, but numbers still seem underwhelming. This would be an ideal mid-tier capstone to add some multiplicative damage, instead of yet more additive. Switching Gun Damage to a larger number Crit Damage value (for example), could go some way to solving Zane’s overall damage issues, and synergise better with the other accuracy/crit skills in the tree too.

Rise to the Occasion
Works fine, could be a little stronger given the proc conditions.

Best Served Cold
Nova damage is poor even in normal/normal mode, and doesn’t scale into higher difficulties in any meaningful way. Needs a huge buff to utility (ie. cryo effectiveness) and/or damage to be viable, especially for such a high tier option.

Futility Belt
Works okay as a one-point elemental damage mitigator, though doesn’t seem to stop elemental status effects at all. Not amazing, but noticeable. Numbers could be stronger this high up the tree, but it’s not useless.

Refreshment
Works okay. Very comparable to a same-tier Amara skill (Sustainment, Fist of the Elements tree). Sustainment is 5 skill points for 20% life steal (4%/point), rather than Zane’s 3 points for 24% (8%/point), but also procs by dealing any sort of elemental weapon damage at all. Zane’s ‘while frozen’ proc is much harder to achieve for the numbers it gives, and rendered totally moot against cryo resistant enemies. The numbers are strong, just address the proc. Something like “deals damage with cryo weapon” would work to bring the two skills more in line, and still have drawbacks against cryo resist enemies, like Anointed. I’d even prefer to see reduced numbers and increased proc conditions to make this more effective.

Nerves of Steel
No use for this skill at all, especially this far down the tree. If it had an added multiplicative crit damage bonus it could make for some interesting choices at this tier.

DOUBLED AGENT TREE

Donnybrook
Skill works, numbers quite underwhelming. 3% gun damage per point is very low, and the regen doesn’t make up for it, with both low numbers, and the ‘missing health’ proc. If the regen numbers were doubled, or the ‘missing health’ changed to ‘total health’, it would be a far more attractive option, and fit better with Zane’s ‘burst’ oriented heal skills. Damage buff probably not needed here if the regen is addressed, but the numbers are pretty humble.

Fractal Frags
Proc seems very unreliable in my own usage, including both ‘on clone summon’, and ‘on clone death’. Percentage ‘on kill’ could do with a boost also.

FIXING ZANE
On the whole, I don’t think Zane is too far away from being at the level of other VHs. He does need some love though, specifically:

• Multiplicative Damage, probably Crit makes the most sense, needs to be added or swapped in to at least a couple of skills throughout his three trees. Under Cover would be the most obvious place for this, specifically Confident Competence, but even adding/switching in some slightly higher Crit Damage numbers for skills like Donnybrook, or Nerves of Steel, could work too.

• Action Skill Control & Responsiveness is a real sticking point on a number of counts. Any buffs given to the Drone or Clone rely on a ‘quantity over quality’ style of interaction to be effective, as much of the damage relies on AI or percentage proc chances. There should be more ways to interactively direct or proc your damage/effect with each of these Action Skills; and the responsiveness for the skills/augments that already exist (clone swapping, shield dropping, Dopplebanger, Old U, Almighty Ordinance, etc) need to be improved significantly.

• Skill Proc Conditions for Zane are some of the most stringent and/or awkward in the game right now, especially given the much lower buff values compared to other VHs. I’m all for making Zane a higher skill cap option to play, if that is the overall aim, but the rewards should be far greater as a result. As things stand, even if the proc conditions were greatly reduced on a number of Zane’s skills, he’d probably still need buffs to his damage numbers somewhere.

• FFYL Damage has already been covered in far more detail above, but this is definitely a sore spot for Zane too, and needs some attention.

Final note: BARRIER VISUAL EFFECTS ARE SENDING ME BLIND.

[Hexxusz0r (Resident inZane)]

Thanks, fractal frags in my experience works as advertised but is only good with homing modules sadly.

[Maximum_Jackson (Vault Hunter)]

Ahh. Okay, understood. I didn’t realise that was the case with Fractal Frags.

You’re most welcome for the response, hope it helps.

[T_o_p_o_i]

I am of the opinion that Seein’ Red needs a rework. The main problem I have with it is that it´s utility is inversely proportional to the utility you gain from two of the main goals of the other trees:

1. In double agent, you have 3 skills that encourage you to never let your action skills run out (Synchronicity, Borrowed Time and the speed one).

2. In Hitman, it is obviously not really compatible with Cool, Calm and collected.

You still get some utility out of Seein’ red of course, starting the fight with kill skills up is nice and all. Nevertheless to me it feels very unsatisfying to have the utility of a skill diminished - or at least kind of working against each other - so the change I propose (as some others have):

Make Seein’ Red activiate your kill skills while an action skill is active. This would be much more in line with Zane’s overarching skill design and feel much more rewarding. If doing this, I would suggest switching Synchronicity with some other skill further down the clone tree so once we hit level 55 we cannot do Synchronicity + Seein’ Red + Cool, Calm and Collected. Assuming my suggested Seein’ Red change and level 55, this combination would outperform other Zane options by alot.

[poekel]

Some of the proposed changes might have the problem, that they could look Zane into one build. You’d have to take CCC, you’d have to take Synchronicity and then the choice would be between a No-Cap-Stone hitman build and a a Double Agent build.

The aim should be to buff Zane while giving players the option to choose. You basically would not do that by buffing Synchronicity and Violent Momentum/Speed as those would just become mandatory for every build (and the stronger Synchronicity gets, the more important CCC gets as uptime for both skill gets more important).

First they should of course change the skills that are more or less useless or working not exactly as described, which mainly is Barrier:

• The skill description suggests that Zane would get reduced benefits while wearing the shield, which should of course apply to AS augments. Currently they do not work when picking up the shield, which of course should be changed (maybe at 50% or 66% efficiency?)
• The capstone description suggests that Zane would shield effects (reduced). First thing I though he would get a big buffed shield when close to the barrier (e. g. +50% shield capacity, any other passive buff at 50% efficiency, while full/depleted buffs depending on Zane’s shields added to current buffs (e. g. 10% runspeed becomes 15%), while the barrier does get some specific effects. Currently Zane seems to receive only a fraction of passive buffs (DR, reflect, absorb) while barrier receives a few on hit effects/full/depleted effect (depending on if the effect starts at depleted/full but is not dependent on the shields being full/depleted). Just buff Zane’s shield (everything) by 50% or 66% when close to the barrier or for example 33% when carrying the barrier and it actually would be much closer to working as described.

Then there are skills that are pretty useless:
Duct Tape Mod: Why does it have a cooldown and the first shot condition while being a chance and still using grenades from your pool? Either get rid of the cooldown or remove the first shot condition. A grenade about every 8 seconds or a 20-30% on first shot of every new mag do not sound OP to me.

If these were to be changed, Zane would be working much better as described, but a Buff should mainly look into adding the big stuff at the end of his trees not at the beginning, to make players choose between trees:
Under Cover: Already has CCC if they would change the capstone to work with his shield, there would be quite some incentive to get to the capstone (currently almost no one takes it). Add a damage bonus to Nerves of Steel.
Hitman: Has the problem that it does not work that well with CCC. In my opinion they should (again) switch out Seeing Red with Death Follows close and buff the bonus of Seein Red to 35-50% and remove the diminishing returns on Good Misfortune. This would provide ample reason to go for the capstone while not locking every build into CCC (which does have additional utility besides skill reset)
Double Agent: Does not have any good damage skills at higher tier. Besides changing Duct Tape Mod, I would change Trick of the Light to be dependent on number of active action skills. This would add a large damage bonus for those going for the capstone while keeping in line of the tree’s action skill usage.

Those bonuses would incentivice players to go for one Capstone (and all should be pretty interesting) and then specialice their character in one additional tree, instead of adding just a few low tier must have skills that as long as CCC remain mandatory for most builds (except boss kill builds) decrease viability of builds not using the early tier damage skills.

[BubbyR]

Duct tape mod may be the worst skill ever developed.

1 point in Duct tape Mod gives 1 grenade every 25 mag changes. Amazing huh?

How about 5 points? gives 1 grenade every 5 mag changes.

Lets assume average time to dump mag and reload is 4 seconds, which is low even for pistols. And, you are shooting consistently.

That means on average you will shoot 1 grenade every 12 seconds of continous shooting and reloading of a fast shooting and reloading gun.

Lets say a gun that takes 6 secs to shoot and empty with continuous shooting and reloading you will shoot one grenade on average every 18 seconds for a 5 point skill.

The average time only goes up more and more with breaks in between shooting and larger mag guns.

Oh and the RNG gods cant save you either, an 8 second cooldown is there too.

I was really excited about this skill when I first saw it. Huge disappointment.

[Hexxusz0r (Resident inZane)]

DTM was set to 8 seconds due to guns like hellwalker or just abusing manual reload on pistols and such, i have no idea why 8 seconds but i do not think gbx will change their minds.

i will keep reading through stuff and select good stuff to upgrade first post. for example DFC and seein red defo should swap back and have bigger bonuses but generally i know devs won’t ever change things like that. that is why i suggested buffing existing skills since it is just number changes. hopes of redesign on anything is very slim. we get no crit modifiers for example what so ever, because they thought 2 AC’s were gonna be too strong but phase grasp does so much more than zane could do with 3AC deployed at the same time. Maybe we will get small number changes but redesigns are just uhhh it can not be expected.

[chris.deiotte]

This is such a good example of why I feel Zane isnt on par with other VHs. I think he does great at mobbing but on boss fights he sometimes has apparent issues. Everything about him feels so much more conditional compared to the others. You want lifesteal well you need to either get a kill or freeze them (either of which not readily available for bosses, without adds or using blue capstone).

You still get some utility out of Seein’ red of course, starting the fight with kill skills up is nice and all. Nevertheless to me it feels very unsatisfying to have the utility of a skill diminished - or at least kind of working against each other - so the change I propose (as some others have):

They should buff seeing red to refresh kill skills on skill reset/reapply to encourage uptime. Youd then have the option to go either heavy in green for CCC or stay in red for stronger damage buffs. All the trees seem to encourage long uptime on skills, same with anointments, but with how blue capstone works you want the opposite for boss fights.

[jmthsauer ("Barriers are for the weak. Or the tryhards"-Zane)]

It’s kind of alright, however one of the main Zane builds makes use of the Rough Rider as a shield and you really don’t want this skill with the RR because it means that corrosive and shock will actually deal more damage to you.

[Maximum_Jackson (Vault Hunter)]

I think this is realistic.

There are plenty of great suggestions to switch skills around, both here and in other threads, but I really can’t see that sort of shuffle happening any time soon; maybe not ever.

Rightly or wrongly, and until hard evidence shows otherwise, my assumption is that the Devs must be happy with Zane’s skill structure as is.

If we can get some of the existing skills buffed, fixed, or augmented somehow, and bring his kit up to speed with the the other VHs, I’d call that a major win.

[Hexxusz0r (Resident inZane)]

that is why i mentioned it. people are suggesting redesigns of skill trees or skills , it won’t happen. since zane has no critical hit skills all we can do is beef up his gun damage, since everything we have from life steal to dmg is conditional at least bonuses should be bigger. or they shall all be like cool hand and i do not know how coding that would be in terms of difficulty. half value as passive and full on kill. even then values still need a rise i am just looking for sensible suggestions regarding this from people who have expertise with other characters as well. moze gets 80% from single skill if she builds deathless zane could hardly gather god damn 80% across the board. i know a lof of people could make zane good quick (just like community patch fixed up axton) if they were allowed to mod but that is not an option. Even if it was i would not play non vanilla for first two years.

I would like to see value band aid “fixes” first and theoretical fixes second. GBX will never admit they have to swap around any of the skills or change capstones and stuff like this as far as i am concerned.

[Hexxusz0r (Resident inZane)]

yes but what does it do exactly? in terms of values and effects. I have read it is 19% reduction but i am not sure.

[Maximum_Jackson (Vault Hunter)]

It’s essentially a non-elemental damage resistance.

In addition, and when kill skill activated, the elemental portion of any damage taken is then converted to non-elemental, so that the same damage resistance can also apply.

Status effects still seem to occur while it is activated however, so my guess is that the elemental status effect chance is proc’d before the damage conversion/reduction.

Edit: I think this is intentional, as Really Expensive Jacket seems to be aimed at mitigating status effects.

In terms of numbers, the skill text claims a 15% damage reduction base - fairly decent for one point - meaning 18.75% with the +25% DFC bonus. I haven’t scientifically tested it myself, so can’t speak conclusively here; but anecdotally, these numbers seem at least ballpark correct in terms of effect.

[poekel]

I think the damage reduction might not get improved (have not tested it) as it is passive bonus (does the passive reload speed get boosted?). You get 15% passive DR and the kill skill part, which should get boosted, is the damage conversion (which hopefully does not add 25% damage and just adds to the duration) that is intended to work with last damage reduction from the other skill.

[Maximum_Jackson (Vault Hunter)]

think the damage reduction might not get improved (have not tested it) as it is passive bonus (does the passive reload speed get boosted?)

You could well be right here, I’m not certain either. It would be difficult to notice a 3.75% difference anecdotally, so perhaps some number testing is required.

According to the skill text, the reload of Cool Hand does get boosted on kill skill activation, but the difference is specifically mentioned with two separate numbers.

For Futility Jacket, this is not the case. No differences are noted, either for duration or percentage.

[poekel]

Testing would be quite simple: Activate kills skills, have no other forms of DR active and look if damage changes after activation, 1000 damage should be 850 without activation and 812.5 with, so the difference would be large enough to be noticed easily (it is quite possible that the skill tree viewer does not use actual ingame values, so any value in there could be independent from what happens ingame; if for example the damage resistant might not get boosted, the passive reload boost might not work as well; though that is quite bad to test; e. g. when using a stop watch Lyuadas with 4.6s card reload actually reloaded faster than ones with 3.8s reload when I used a timer…).

[Superfr34k (SteJay)]

The damage reduction is mentioned before the “kill skill” in the effect text, so the only thing that should be buffed is the duration.
I’m not up to date with the reddit thread that researched, if futility belt transforms damage to true damage outside of dueling, too.
But if that is the case, no dmg will be further mitigated with futility belt, which would make it absolutely terrible, practically increasing the damage you get in many situations.
I would be highly interested in this, maybe it could be tested by activating it with seeing red and then exploding a barrel