How I would go about buffing Zane

Borderlands 3 Zane the Operative
#1

Zane is really close to being on par with the other characters. There’s nothing wrong with him from a design standpoint. His actions skills all function well and synergize together quite nicely. The only issues with Zane at the moment are from a numbers standpoint. Don’t get me wrong you can mob with Zane, kills bosses with Zane and play the game just fine, but statistically and in terms of his anointments he falls flat compared to the other three characters. He’s really close to being on par he just needs a few buffs. So here are my proposed solutions.

  1. A majority of Zane’s gun damage skills are around 20%. Violent Momentum, Synchronicity, Confident Confidence, Double barrel, Trick of the Light is 18%, Donnybrook is only 19% with Death Follows Close and the barrier amps damage by 25%. My proposed solution would be to just make all these skills go to 30% at base. Pretty simple, but I think buffing all these skills would go a long way.

  2. The digi clone with the double barrel capstone can output a good amount of damage especially in normal mode and TVHM, but at mayhem levels pet damage in general just falls off a cliff, this doesn’t just go for the Digi Clone and Sentinel, but Flak’s pets and of course Iron Bear leave a lot to be desired in mayhem levels, modifiers definitely don’t help either. I think that at Mayhem levels the Digiclone and Sentinel should scale with each mayhem level and their damage should not be affected by Modifiers. Giving them a flat damage buff would break them in normal and TVHM since they’re already really strong.

  3. It’s really kind of dumb that you don’t get the benefits of Charged Relay and Nanites or some ■■■■■ while carrying the Barrier. That’s something I’d definitely change.

4.Playing Dirty especially with Snipers, The Cutsman and Launchers is a great skill, but with a lot of the best guns in the game being multi pellet guns you don’t get much out of it and with fully automatic guns you don’t get much from it either and if you don’t have a class mod boosting the chance to a 100% chance for another projectile it’s not that great of a skill in a majority of cases. It should be the next ten shots after getting a kill instead of five. This would it viable with more weapon types and make it useful in more builds.

This are my proposed solutions to fixing Zane’s short coming at Mayhem levels. Just to clarify Zane is perfectly viable right now and there’s nothing Zane can’t do that the other characters can, but again he’s a bit behind in terms of damage and thinks these changes are all he needs.

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#2

i find zane better than flak for mobbing, but slower for boss kills but as you said, perfectly viable.

fortunate for me as i prefer mobbing so use him loads more haha.

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#3

Zane’s problem is that he’s too much action skill-dependent, moreover, many skills are useless and ineffective and I will never stop repeating it.

#4

Nerves of Steel, top tier skill slot . Nearly 100% worthless and laughable compared to other vault hunters accuracy and handling skills.

#5

[Base Gun Damage x (1 + Confident Confidence + Violent Momentum + Synchronicity + Donnybrook + Double Barrel) x (1 + Cold Bore + Trick of Light) + *Playing Dirty] x (1+Barrier)

That 25% damage from Barrier is way different than the 20% from confident confidence.

#6

Why is it calculated differently?

#7

Is this a bad thing? Skills have short cool downs and you can have two of them. It seems like he was built almost like the opposite of Moze who I rarely use her action skill on?

I have no idea if this was intentional or not and I also think Zane is a bit closer to being equal than most people think. Yet I totally buy the idea that he’s still “behind” to an extent.

That said he’s so fun. I didnt even use shield when I went to 50 with him because STNL and clone combo were just a blast to use.

#8

Lacks passive (usefull) skills

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#9

I’m doing the slaughter shaft and I can’t for the life of me understand that if Zane’s digi-clone is a “super badass” why he doesn’t spawn with one of these high firerate unending ammo rocket launchers like ALL of the badasses in this place do?!

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#10

…Because you don’t have Double Barrel on and you haven’t equipped your clone with a rocket launcher.

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#11

Your name says it all lol

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#12

His name aside, he knows what he’s talking about lol

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