Zane Questions for Zane Lovers

Borderlands 3 Zane the Operative
#1

Before you get your undies in knots, let me preface this with the fact Zane is my favorite VH, and my first choice.

I am of the group who believe Zane is too weak for Mayhem 3. Yet, I see many argue that he is totally viable.

Most builds I see with Zane are so incredibly gear specific. Other builds I see people “reset” till they have the perfect Mayhem modifier. (Which if you are doing that, you are not playing the game right, and are just terrible at adapting.)

Some are starting to claim he is viable, and not so gear specific. I want you to explain?

Because, Flak is my secondary. Flak, without really using the action skill, still holds fine, and slaughters on Mayhem 3 no matter what gun is used. With action skill, Flak melts god.

Zane, who uses two skills at once, has tons of buff skills and kill skills, doesn’t hold a dang candle to Flak in any way in my experience. I have messed around with a few builds, and on Mayhem 3 he just can not compete.

I am talking solo of course, as giving some BS about Zane in a group just means that the group carries his lack of damage.

I am looking for answers. Real answers. Every thread is full of haters, with a few guys going, “HE IS AMAZING SHUT UP” but without explaining dittly on how.

I want your builds and gear list. Because I want to see if it is as “gear dependent” as it seems. (Which as a Diablo fan, I am ok with, but does make it harder.) I also want to know weakness. Because if you can take on normal enemies, cool. But if your build sucks vs annointed or mutiple badasses, then it isn’t really all that viable, is it?

Tl;dr - Explain 1) how you think he is viable. 2) build used. 3) gear used. 4) weakness in build.

#2

1. he is viable in literally any decent way you build him

3.no specific gear required
4. literally nothing just does not do comparable dmg to remnant phase grasp siren if that is a standard lol

play throughs completed: snipers only mayhem 3 run
play through in progress: only non red text gear mayhem 3 run

challenge completed : no udnercover slaughter shaft mayhem 3 twice.

hope this answers it all, if not i will further clarify.

1 Like
#3

I don’t think Zane is inherently weak at MM3, but if that’s an issue, don’t play at MM3? I specifically play at MM1 to open combat options up to, well, everything (lousy builds, less-than-perfect gear, slides/slams, all the things) while I get him dialed in.

I may turn it up as I get more in tune with using him with my own restrictions. At the moment I don’t even look at the modifiers. Once I get my two Zane builds down pat (my own muscle memory and strategy calls), MM2 shouldn’t be an issue if I actually work with the modifiers.

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#4

Look at literally any of my builds, they are all TVHM M3 and some use guns/skills/builds that the rabble said “don’t/can’t work” or consider to be blatantly bad.

I haven’t had trouble using Zane in any context in any environment and with any modifiers since I learned his mechanics and how they interact with items in general.

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#5

I will do some research, tho I am skeptical. I will rebuild my Zane from the ground up and see if any of this fits what i am looking for.

Thanks for all the info and replies.

I’ll for certain look into it.

As for why MM3? Because that’s my goal. No other reason. I want to be at the top of the scale. Just like why did I GR solo to 100+ in diablo.

#6

mate right now i am destroying m3 without any legendaries so i am sure you will have no trouble with all the legendaries at your disposal.

1 Like
#7

Also @akiltheawesome

Have fun, happy learning.

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#8

Either I am missing a particular skill or my idea of destroying MM3 is different then everyones.

Rest assured, I’ll look into it over the weekend, and do my part to make sure I have tested everything fully.

It is my hope I am in the wrong, and find what I am missing.

#9

level 50 amara and Moze, Zane is now somewhere around 27-30 ish, by far he is weaker then both girls.

#10

You’re comparing Apples and Oranges to a Pinapple.

They all have drastically different playstyles, so coming from either Moze or Amara, he’s going to seem weak but that’s because you’re trying to play him like Moze or Amara.

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#11

I haven’t seen any builds that don’t at least require a specific piece or 2. Unlimited ammo is easy to do, facepuncher/cutpurse arti. Then builds LIKE other gear to work with it. It would be boring if gear had no impact.

#12

True to a point.

#13

I can almost do MM3 with Zane. Missing some gear. But the issue at this point is effort. Good god does he take sooo much more effort then other Vault Hunters.

Maybe it’s me. Idk. But I think I am done with Zane for now.

#14

So you have not seen anything then? Plenty builds just good with whatever

#15

Unless I am missing something, or a specific roll that may help more, his survivability is just low as balls in comparison to the other vault hunters. Went through a few builds. MM2 never been an issue. MM3 I just can’t seem to get him right.

Either the annointed are damn near impossible with him.

Or you need exact gear I am missing, and don’t feel like grinding for. (I refuse to grind offline or use any exploit in grinding or builds.)

I have looked through a lot.

Today I am off. I’ll probably spend a bit more time. But in general, and feel free to disagree, he doesnt hold a candle to the others.

Not giving up, just not seeing how these builds everyone talks about are just amazing eith w.e. weapon as said.

Best survivability is ccc and barrier, but get a bad roll or too many annointed you are screwed. I am still wondering how many videos simply wait for good MM rolls to make it look great.

Again, I plan to best my head against the wall till I make it. But f*** me, it so far just doesnt compare to others in speed, effectiveness, or ease of use.

#16

I knew he was going to be gear dependent from the get go and I bet on there being amazing gear to synergize well with him.

But I didn’t think other vh’s would still be better. I still really like playing with Zane, but I lost the bet.

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#17

This is my main stick.

If you have a VH who you can synergize gear with, and specifics to make them work, they gotta be top of the line, right?

No. Zane, the amazing beautiful bastard he is, just takes so much micro building so far to make viable, and then you have Flak. (My alt) Who could legit pick up a damn rock and be better without effort.

Leaves a bad taste.

Specifically talking Mayhem 3…just so we are clear…Zane was a fun god till then.

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#18

I do believe that Zane is definitely viable in Mayhem 3. He has a lot of sustain with either the CCC/barrier build or even the clone/drone. Personally, I feel like the clone/drone build is more flexible either for co-op or various mayhem modifiers. It really depends what’s your benchmark for saying a build does or doesn’t work.

If you want to clear Slaughter Shaft with relative ease, then yeah CCC/barrier is the most obvious choice. Is it possible with other builds? Yeah, of course. But is it easily doable with other builds? Not really? I can’t argue for a firm no because there’s still new things we’re discovering about how his skills and new gear interaction we’re probably just not aware as of yet. As of right now though, I don’t think it’s easy to clear Slaughter Shaft solo with Zane without the CCC/barrier combo. (Mostly because of those nasty rockets that makes aiming a lot more tedious than in other Circles of Slaughters.)

To me, part of the appeal of playing Zane is the inherent difficulty that comes bundled with him. Tinkering with my builds and trying a lot of different things to see what works is fun to me. Reading about new build ideas or gear interaction on the forum is also very fun and it can help you take your build to the next level by mixing your ideas with someone else’s.

I won’t argue against a buff though, and I’m actually all for it. I just think that gear dependent character are the most interestings ones simply because of how well they scale with good gear. I’d say their “power floor” is definitely the lowest, but they CAN have a “power ceiling” ridiculously high.

On the other hand, I think it’s pretty naive to act as if Zane is all good and well now. He definitely lacks compared to other Vault Hunters. Yeah, he can clear everything in the game, but I feel like there’s a community around Zane right now that takes a lot of pride in clearing XY thing in the game with him. Then they go around saying that Zane is on par with any VH or even that we shouldn’t compare Zane with the other characters because they’re the OP ones. Basically, anyone having issues with him are simply scrubs that needs to get gud. It’s like doing anything with Zane is an achievements. (Which is to me an indicator that he is definitely under-tuned right now.)

If you didn’t do the masher side-quest on Eden-6, I’d start there in terms of gear. It’ll help you a lot with Brain Freeze/CCC. A good masher with the CCC/Barrier build can carry you through a lot of mobbing while you get better gear. Replace it with a Maggie once you find one and it’ll be even better. Other than that, I don’t really have better recommendation that doing something you enjoy doing in the game while trying to get a few drops, or farming Graveward for a little while to try and gear up pretty fast.

In the end, don’t forget it’s just a game. If you like the challenge that Zane propose right now, then all is well and stick with him. On the other hand, if you keep feeling like he’s too weak and like you were having a lot more fun with say Fl4k and you want to see how ridiculous you can get them to be, then go for it. It’s just about having fun. The devs also confirmed they’re aware that Zane isn’t in the best shape right now and are looking into how to help him get on par with the other VHs. You can always get back to him once he’s in a better place (which I expect would be with the big November patch but there’s nothing to back this).

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#19

Zane is not meant to facetank sustained fire, use his speed to evade rockets/grenades, and get some breather room when needed. Clone allows quick reposition and barrier and absorb most bullets if you have a transformer or similar.

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#20

I like them maybe a couple at a time at most, especially since they tend to come with a set of badasses that are tough enough on their own. If there are too many, my problem becomes not ‘how to kill them without dying’ as ‘how to do this quickly enough that the enemies I just cleared out don’t respawn right on top of me’. A militant in any company almost guarantees this, since I spend a lot of time waiting for the immunity to wear off.

It’s the same number of videos they discard because they died like an idiot and didn’t publish. In the parlance of BL2, it’s the number of re-rolls they needed so the open mission Grog Nozzle would roll with a blade. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Am literally running a Dahl Zane this morning through a fresh set of TVHM, with a (crappy) SNTNL and barrier build… am going nowhere MM3, but might hit MM1 if I get the hang of this comfortably.