Hi friends,
I’m running a cryo build so I’m largely specced into the undercover skill tree with the rest of my points almost evenly split into the DPS skills in the other two trees . The thing is I can’t decide what benefits me more, clone or drone or should I just use grenades instead?
Which Action Skill do you guys prefer?
0 voters
Clone, at least with the capstone it can do some damage, unlike the Drone that only tickles enemies even after maxing the blue tree.
Clone is far superior in basically every way. Drone feels like an action augment placeholder in comparison to Clone and Barrier.
Honestly? I love the clone and would normally suggest that…but you’re looking for more damage on a cryo build.
SNTL augments exist for 50 percent bonus cryo during drone flight, and also, the speed bonus damage and stuff are in Blue Tree. It’s really gonna depend on what you want from it, but SNTL might be the choice to support you. Just make sure to get the grenade drop skill
Unless using any high damage combo/tech, always the Drone.
Clonetree has some useful skills but the clone itself is an utter garbage action skill.
Interesting. I have tried a cryo build a couple of times now reluctantly using the drone and barrier as the drone is “up” for longer thereby giving me more time to try and proc CCC. It probably says more about my (lack of) shooty skills than anything but I couldn’t get it to work reliably at all even though I could easily tell my TTK was faster using it. Despite that, being able to duck, dive and distract with the clone keeps me from getting downed nearly so much as if I’m left on my own, which is what most fights feel like using drone.
So, clone for me because I can manipulate his positioning to my liking throughout his up time whereas drone and barrier are pretty much click and forget. The ability and flexibility to move him or myself around the battlefield is what makes him my choice and best buddy.
This may not be “correct” per se, but I prefer the Clone for boss fights and the Drone for mobbing (Slaughter Shaft, etc.).
Especially on higher difficulties, I feel like the clone just gets destroyed way too quickly, even with buffs and action rate cooldowns. When there are like 3 or 4 big bads shooting rockets, the clone hardly gets any shots off before he gets toasted.
There are viable options all around, but with the Drone, its free grenade procs pretty consistently, and with a good Cryo grenade like Whispering Ice or a Cryo Hex, you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck in a Cryo focused build, plus all the kills skills attached are Zane’s biggest form of damage augmentation. And Salvation works off general life steal rather than requiring enemies be frozen if you’re running into enemies who can’t be.
drone is pretty much dogshit compared to clone and barrier but it bring very nice and easy to utilize annointment with it. at level 50 a lot of people me included take drone but at level 70 it will be all barrier clone drone has no potential what so ever.
I don’t know, I’m thinking that depends on how Zane’s supposed added buffs playout. I can see at level 70 with the way health typically scales that the clone may not have survivability enough at that level to justify using him over the drone which won’t have that issue. But I usually use clone and drone and leave barrier behind.
clone has superior utility you can just dump him inside the barrier and he will be allright.
Yeah but that would kind of alter your playstyle if you wanted to pick up the barrier and run with it you’re kind of stuck babysitting the clone in a semi-fixed location. If they actually buffed the weaponry on the drone I could see it being very useful. I don’t know why they’re only doing like 140 (i think) with the lightning strikes to strip away a shield…that’s a joke for example. If they buffed that to maybe 1000 damage and let it scale appropriately with level, it would be a great augment to pick up and something very useful.
Clone will give you health Regen, copy your equiped gun, act as your second wind (by sacrifice) throw grenade. You can trade places and it’s got a quick cool down.
i would never count on gearbox getting pet right i am only looking at what you can get from it and clone has better annointments and nade droping capabilities as well as provides solid 40% gun dmg after 2 swaps which you can maintain and if u swap super fast even hit 1.6 soemtimes add in gun reloaded on swap or 130% dmg on swap and more nades then sntnl can do and you see superiority. if gearbox this or that yes sntnl could be good but it won’t be it is easy to fix but 3 months after release none of drone augments besides winter’s drone make any sense. boomsday is weak bad dose is weak and does no dmg static field is weak and does no dmg and barely refills you allmighty orderence does so little that nobody will ever pick it up. it is like gearbox does not even know what HP values enemies are carrying in game. as to drone with 50% hp buff he can withstand more than one would expect in shaft and probably will do decently in regular uvhm now if gbx gets stuck with mayhem ■■■■■■■■ it will probably be trash at uvhm mayhem 4
This thread has turned into the Clone/Drone wars and the drone is getting it’s ass kicked. But I’m not going to pile on just yet. Instead I’ll share my weird perspective first. 
I don’t like pets in general and I specifically don’t like pets that do all the damage. Maybe it’s an ego thing but I want to do all the murdering myself . But given how much I 
Zane I’ve had to reconcile the fact that he has not 1 but 2 pets! Fortunately, neither of them are particular powerful out of the box, which suits me fine. The clone is kind of an exception because you can do plenty of builds where it kills all the things! But that’s a choice that you the player get to make and not making that choice is equally viable and powerful.
[A brief aside]
The last sentence of the previous paragraph is yet another example of Zane’s flexibility and diversity. He really is the best designed character in the game. But I digress. Where I’m going with all this is the following.
The ingenuity of Zane’s pet interactions (one of many) is his skill Synchronicity. What I really like about that skill is it powers up the player for using the pets in the first place. So regardless of whether the pets themselves are powerful, you the player are made more powerful by their presence. I find that interaction quite innovative even though it’s not new (i.e., BL2 Axton’s Battlefront skill). Granted, I think Synchronicity should be increased to at least 25% per and maybe even as high as 35% per. But the specific percentage isn’t really the point.
Now that I’ve expressed my weird ideas about pets let me jump knee deep into the clone vs drone war that’s being waged on this thread.
It seems perfectly reasonable to me that the drone is soooo much weaker than the clone. And here is why. The clone takes more work to manage because a)it can’t move and b)you can’t direct it (i.e, tell it what to shoot). So as a reward for making you work harder it can be made more powerful (i.e, Boom Enhance and Double Barrel) and you too can be more powerful (i.e., increased damage after swapping from Double Barrel and anointments).
The drone on the other hand is a fire and forget pet. No micro management is required and therefore it has to be weaker than the clone. And not just by a little but by a lot because if it was nearly as powerful as or more powerful than the clone then there would never be a reason to pick the clone over the drone, outside of personal taste (which btw is a totally legit reason). That said, I think the drone’s base damage and augments do need serious buffs to keep pace with enemy scaling in TVHM/M3.
I have the feeling that the pets in the game have been balanced around normal mode. Because it’s painfully obvious how lackluster, with some exceptions of course, they perform out the box in TVHM/M3. And to be fair, GBX has recognized their under performance and have gone on record as saying it’s something they are looking at. I’m going to hope they get it right and if they don’t, I feel like some of the minds (not the whining snowflakes though!) on these forum will provide some good feedback that will help get at least Zane’s pets in the right direction.
I have a MIRV grenade that splits into three radiation grenades. It gets dropped frequently from my drone and does some serious damage. Especially if there are lots of barrels hanging around. The MIRV blows up causing significant damage, the barrels blow up, Zane says something cool, what’s not too love.
To be fair, I haven’t spent much time with the clone. I use it to draw attention from the minions from Heck as I try to blow up Haunt’s shield globes. Works most of the time. I was thinking of respeccing and trying the clone more. The reason being I find the barrier inconsistent. I almost only use it in an emergency, and sometimes enemies just walk through it. Not sure if that’s a feature or a bug.
I’ve tried other grenade mods with the drone, but I can’t find one that’s as fun as the MIRV. I also have a relic that increases radiation by 10% and makes the blasts larger and more powerful. It’s a good combination.