Moze already has only one action skill, why is it still not working?

Borderlands 3 Moze the Gunner
#1

I feel really bad about this. Moze used to be my main and I love(d) her.… but now my play time on Amara has her beat.
Why? Because her action skills are useful. Granted, everyone I’ve seen plays with the same phasegrasp - unless they want to trigger anointed effects - but that’s still better than no choice.

So I was wondering, since I keep hearing that “making Iron Bear stronger was too difficult, that it doesn’t scale well”… is it actually difficult to fix?

Well, I don’t think so! Not on a design level at least, since I can’t speak to the technical side of things.

I’m thinking, since IB is basically a playable character, he should be treated as such! Make his strength in terms of both damage and survivability rely on much more than just some base values! Examples:

• have him gain damage, (direct and over time), reload speed and fire rate based on your offensive gear score (your 4 equipped weapons plus 1 grenade divided by 5)

• do the same for damage reduction with the shield (and possibly the relic and class mod, but weigh the shield more heavily, since gear scores on those aren’t as fixed)

• let him benefit from more of Moze’s skills

• or all of them, even if it’s just 50% of her bonus

• introduce or change class mods to push him further

This is just some brain-storming of the top of my head, but I’m sure more and maybe better ideas are out there and I hope Gearbox shows that they care about Moze, and the play style that suddenly stopped working on Mayhem mode. I enjoyed switching between Moze and IB when both did well… let’s get back to that! :slight_smile:

And maybe some of these ideas might help Zane and FL4K as well.

#2

Iron Bear is really good. Not quite so much as a killer mech regrettably, though actually the Explosive Bullets + Nuke combo is surprisingly decent on M3

But I can show some footage in the near future, demonstrating just how much Iron Bear helps Moze on M3 and how crucial it is

#3

At this point they should just have 1 Skill Tree be a different Action Skill just like the rest of the Vault Hunters
-One Action be IB as original for those who want to play it (just keep all the weapon attachments for different playstyles)
-Screw it just give us a regular soldier turret for another Action
-Have a third Action be like an area/map wide airstrike

Obviously the other 2 action skills would play the soldier archetype but the point is IB isn’t working for the majority of Moze players. I say they should just scrap the idea and make 3 Actions for her instead. The health boost was nice but didn’t help much.

3 Likes
#4

Or hell now that I think about it have one of her action skills be a semi-salvador. She has that big machine cannon/gatling laser thing in official artwork. Let us use that big ass gun as an action skill

1 Like
#5

Gearbox has never been good at making characters with pet action skills. For example, Roland in borderlands 1. His turret action skill at endgame is useless for damage. You’re better off using it to regenerate ammo and to grenade jump by throwing your grenade at the base of the turret. The mistakes that were made in borderlands 1 obviously haven’t been learned from.

2 Likes
#6

Well, like I said, i think IB is closer to a playable character in my eyes. Don’t get me wrong, I totally dig Auto Bear and the class mod for it - he can crit nonstop with the railguns - but that’s additional damage. Auto Bear should still be more powerful, but you should totally be able to use IB activity without losing dps.

(The next part is also an answer to whoever said IB is “really good”, sorry I’m not even gonna try to quote your post on the phone)

Bringing it back to Amara and her Phasegrasp. It only gets stronger over the course of the game. One possible path of progression: First you just hold one enemy, then multiple, then share damage between them, then add a DoT through a class mod. It’ll always be viable since it mainly adds good crowd control and the majority of the damage comes from your gun (or scales with it, e.g. Nimbus mod). That is what a really good skill looks like! Your action skill should be the thing you wanna use against most of the enemies, especially strong ones - not just against weak mobs.

#7

I’ve got a whole post on suggestions for Iron Bear :slight_smile:
[Overhauling Iron Bear: A Large Scale Restructuring of Moze's Action Skill!]
TL:DR - I think IB should offer a lot more utility options with loads of customization.

The appeal should be less about damage (because really, how do you have it compete with Moze for raw damage after you’ve farmed up great gear, without it being too broken the rest of the time), and more about crowd control and battle field support.

In theory, I like the idea of it’s damage being tied to your gear scores, but in reality the gear scores are too inconsistent relative to the actual weapon utility to be a useful benchmark.

#8

I’ll definitely read it, when I find the time.

Well yes, the gear score thing is inconsistent to some degree, but at least there’s some consistency, generally (lvl 49 < lvl50 or purple < legendary < anointed purple < anointed legendary). The idea was to find something they could do quick, for now. This way they could “just” add some math into the code, without a much more welcome, but also much more difficult redesign…

I do think you’re definitely right about the utility, especially for Auto Bear, but I’d still want a way to do massive damage from within the mech… otherwise what’s the point of having a murder bear, if a foot soldier can take and dish out much more damage. Like, what’s the reason for the Ursa Corps, if a regular group of soldiers would be cheaper and much more efficient - it destroys the power fantasy, character background and gameplay all at once, which is why I find it so baffling… :frowning:

#9

Also: One MASSIVE problem that no one mentioned here so far: Mayhem 4!

It’s already announced (and I’m guessing further increases are at least in consideration…), so if IB doesn’t scale and doesn’t have really good utility we might be better of with a button that just activates anointed gear, so we don’t have to do the old hop in/out constantly… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

2 Likes
#10

Mayhem 4 is a great point!
That’s not even mentioning that there’s good odds they’ll add at least one or two more levels

#11

The straight forward solution is to give everysingle (AND I MEAN ALL OF THEM) perk in EACH tree some kind of bonus to ironbear based on what it does to moze, for example, lets pick a few random skills:

Vampyr: … “also gives fuel back when in iron bear”

Click click: … " same effect when in iron bear"

Experimental munitions: … “same effect when in iron bear”

etc…

And all those iron bear specific perks just rework them all, how many are there ? 4 or 5 ? just add whats needed for Moze, for example ways to regain shields, or health that doesnt involve a damn grenade. Or faster movement, or whatever, moze’s skill trees are so dull it hurts.

This way you not only give iron bear the intended usefulness, but also give it a playstyle that matches Moze’s, you dont need to worry about investing in iron bear or not, it instantly becomes a better version of Moze for a few good seconds, like its supposed to be.

3 Likes
#12

Just buff his base damage and armor for mayhem , allow him to use mozes equipped grenades, have more of mozes skills like Phalanx doctrine , vamypre etc apply to IB as well, lower the reload and cooldown of his weapons , and give his shield s small chance (15%) to reflect bullets

There. Done .

Dont know why people go so overboard with IB suggestions. Its stupidly simple. His dps sucks in Mayhem , just buff dps. Yoi dont want to use him because you lose a lot of mozes utilities and skills, just have him be able to use mozes grenades and most of her skills apply to him as well. Something like reflecting bullets give him something moze doesn’t have, etc

Keep it simple guys…

#13

I do agree with the two previous post, skills should have more of an impact (which is why I suggested it in the first place).

However, I disagree with “just buffing for mayhem”. Here’s why:
For one, it takes away from the gearing up experience. Once you hit lvl50 and turn on M3 IB would be really good, regardless of any gear and amount played.
That in turn is probably something the developer (and some players) wouldn’t want, since it takes away from the challenge.
Also, they’d have to balance it for every single mayhem tier. This might sound “simple”, but I doubt it’s easy… lot’s of testing required.

And I really don’t like the idea of my damage being tied to the difficulty, cause there’s no point for it then. Why play on normal or M1/2 if you essentially “lose” the damage you might have had on TVHM M3.

So yeah, hard disagree on that idea. :slight_smile:

#14

Ok so here’s a few ideas which i think could make moze gear affect iron bears damage. i personally might prefer him to be more of a support than damage dealer, but eitherway.

  • Anointed: iron bear deal 250% increased damage while it’s active. This could make some interesting builds around rocketeer and bear trooper (?).

Example 1: Blast master + annointment, you’re a glass cannon
Example 2: Bear trooper + annointment, you’re a killing machine while piloting your mech with increased duration and reduced fuel cost.
Example 3: Rocketeer + annointment, you have a capable support turret with auto bear.

terror annointments are dynamic in that you can switch between weapons while terrifed to benefit from a different bonus, same could be applied here for auto bear. for instance, you switch to a “20% bonus incendiary damage while auto bear is active” weapon, you’d increase your damage, while IB lose his. Switch back, and he do increased damage again.

  • add a Damage reduction to iron bear, straight up as defult. IB already have 50% health increase, give it 50% DR aswell. 90% less DoT damage (70% vs cryo and corrosive). might be overshooting it, but i do believe DoT damage is what screws IB over the most, atleast that’s how i feel when i’m using him in slaughter shaft for example.

this could allow IB to be somewhat useful for builds that aren’t excplict built around it as difficulty increases. it could help IB survive more out of the box but would still need stainless steel bear skill etc, which is essentially a duration skill increase skill. it gives more health, true but it doesn’t matter without any damage mitigation i don’t think, could be wrong though.

  • Revisit some of the augments and make them syenergize more with Moze. Possibly ditch his need to reload entirely for some of augments. currently, i feel the reload have a bigger impact on his damage than the fact that he deals pretty low damage as it is. (blast master CAN give him decent damage, but again modifiers usually screw in my experience).
  • Molten roar augment for the salamander doesn’t seem to benefit from splash damage, for example(i could be wrong). this would have been a good option to use during +70% elemental mayhem modifer if you used blast master. allthough, with +70% elemental damage modifer it does kinda melt anything flesh, problem is - a lot of things at higher activites has either shield or armor, or both and if you use specialist bear, you build into dual wield the same weapons, which kinda screws it up. that said, i’ve not tested the corrosive augment much. The nuke and most of the augments in DW does benefit from splash damage already, but aside from the nuke - all of them deal normal damage which i notice is often impacted by mayhem modifiers more than anything else. plus, it’s a neutral damage type so it doesn’t really have any benefits against anything.
  • Bear fist, same here. doesn’t seem to get any benefits from +melee damage.

Dakka bear, maybe make it a 3 point skill allow it to fire automatically.

  • 1 points: adds a turret to the back of iron bear which deals incediary damage to nearby enemies, can be manned.
  • 2 points: increase damage by 15%, changes to shock.
  • 3 points: increase damage by 20%, changes to corrosive(or cryo)
  • Direct moze buff. she need more than vampyr to survive. boosting IB would help obviously. but i feel that she should have something else aswell for builds that doesn’t include IB. Force feedback in Shields of retribution tree needs to go, atleast the current iteration. i’ve seen a lot suggest to make it function the same as axton’s able, or quick charge (i’m not sure which, or maybe both?). that would be perfect. her skills in SoR already ramps up her damage the more she kills, why not allow her shield to regen while she takes damage? bloodletter already make shield recharge rate super slow so i don’t think it would be to OP, right? bonus: grant iron bear the ability to share moze shield.

I just hope they’re not going to give iron bear a damage boost through a class mod, i think it would restrict possible builds around him far to much - we already see this with dominant class mods. it reduces build options IMO.

i usually wish for a dash ability for IB whenever i talk about ways to improve him, turns out he actually already have this and i’ve missed this completely (not sure how, i use him a lot)

it’s her action skill, IB should be somewhat functional however you choose to play, to some degrees. my suggestions most definitely may not be the best way to do it, but i think it would allow iron bear to be a more flexible action skill, a lot of options on how you want to impact IB, as much or as little as you want.

Maybe?

All Action Skill Damage needs improvement; not % buffs, but to scale off your weapon damage
#15

Issue with IB for me is the disconnect between the anointed gear and the long cooldown. Even if Iron Bear wasn’t average/bad, I’m not gonna stay in it and wait out a 2 minute cooldown to proc my anointment… Of course this changes if IB by itself is viable.

Honestly, you could keep the cooldown as is, remove the armor and just have it use fuel. One arm is whatever you want IB to use (can cycle between two choices) and the other is a bigger, digistructed version of whatever gun you hopped in with, the caveat being it now has +X splash radius. A bigger mechanized Moze, if you will. I’m not sure how you’d address fuel drain with the digistructed gun though. My rationale for this is IB needs to be either utility-based or a “power-up” on a long cooldown.

#16

Before i say anything i will say that this is just my opinion based on what i see and read on forums and videos.
Not really a Moze fan, let alone a main.

I think that Moze and Fl4k are in a similar but at the same time different place.
Moze has only 1 action skill meaning that most of her abilities in the skill trees need to make the difference in raw numbers and percentages.
This means that even now with only 48 skill points she could’ve been REALLY powerful.(look at the granade build before the patch)

A build like that can even be “fun” to some people (not me tbh) but it was utterly broken.
it was literally a spam to win.
it’s only fair that GBX is trying to fix this.

Now…how can they fix this?
in my opinion this problem WILL present itself again in a few dlc’s with the addition of new skill points, giving her the option to spend even more points into raw numbers that will make her broken again.
the only 2 options i can see are preatty mutch simple:

1- Reworking most of her abilities.
you tried…you didn’t made it right, try again.

2-Moze needs to be the most nerfed and buffed character in the game.
We can’t keep those percentages so high when in a few weeks we will start to get more skill points and more raw damage that will make her broken again.
she needs to have a set of different percentages at every dlc to keep her useful and not…not like this.

I’d mutch prefere GBX to say “Okay guys, we f*cked up and to fix this situation we will take our time to change the caracter from the bottom to the top.”
we will probaly have to deal with a month or two of a useless moze? yeah but at least we can get a better one in a few months with a rework.

Not going to talk about IB because the problem with IB is preatty mutch simple.
he needs to use less fuel when it shoots, have more HP and it needs to be generally more fast.
i really think IB can be save in a few and easy changes.

Again, not really an expert on Moze but this is what i think about her, tell me what you guys think or if i said something wrong about her.

#17

In terms of raw damage percentages I think most players already use most of the really good ones, so I don’t think more skill points will have much of an impact. At least not more than they would on other chars as well.

As to the rework: I don’t think she (on foot!) needs a complete overhaul, far from it. Some tweaks and maybe change a few skills/augments. Additions for IB sure.
I wouldn’t mind having 2 more action skills, which would justify a more extensive rework.

However, keep in mind, they already sold you the game and it’s probably reasonable to assume that most of these developers are working on DLC or different projects altogether. The remaining devs have lot’s of other stuff to take care of… So don’t expect too much.

Also please take this as a side note; you’ll know why if you read it:
So lots of what you had to say revolves around future plans. I’m not sure if Gearbox said anything about this - one comment aside, in which someone said that they probably won’t do DLC-characters, but rather expand the existing ones.
So it all heavily depends on what they’ll do. Will they extend the current skill trees, so we can go down further and get a new cap stone?
Will they add a 4th tree per character, with it’s own action skill for everyone except Moze?
Will we get more skill points first and additional options later?
It’s all way too speculative for now and therefore doesn’t add much to the topic at this time.

#18

I think that the iron bear should be something like diablo 3 archon mode for the wizzard, it should be moze on crack for a few sec/min and they should even consider creating a skill that will make the bear shoot all of its weapons at once or atleast a mix.

Anyway my point that it should be enhanced moze with modified abillities and cooldown reduction/boosts for the bear should be something im excited to get from my gear/skills

#19

Please no Archon mode sucks. Don’t bring that trash game style here.

#20

I didnt mean to copy past it but it should be treated as something that i want to use and get and enhance my moze