Trial Bosses As The Dedicated Loot Source For Legendary Class Mods is Bad Design: Here is Why

[akiltheawesome]

I want to preface this post with a disclaimer:
I am not saying, I want to the best things in the game to be handed to me. This is not a plea from the lazy or unskilled. Putting Class Mods in there current state behind Trial Bosses is bad from a design standpoint, and I will explain why. I will also offer an alternative suggestion at the end.

back story: The community has been heavily testing what bosses drop what gear, and the conclusion is that legendary class mods are dedicated to trial bosses(they can also world drop). Research below:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1fkCwu0zeX1BBGcNEzWGZDr2kQ0IOPSoZQK2FD-zpw1M/htmlview?sle=true#gid=0

Legendary Class Mods should not be placed on Trial Bosses for one reason really. There is too much discrepancy between versions of the same legendary class mods. Getting the legendary mod itself is not the prize. Getting a god roll version of a legendary class mod is the holy grail. This is different than weapon drops. Weapons don’t have that much RELEVANT variation between the same weapon.

In previous installments such a borderlands 2, putting a class mod behind such a trial would not have been bad design because class mods were more focused and the discrepancy between the same class mod were low. Getting the class mod itself was the prize.

This game has an entirely different philosophy with wildly expansive variation within a single class mod type. Class mod types can vary in too many factors such as Manufacture loyalties, Gun Passives, Melee Passives, Gun Types, Action skill cooldown, Health regen, etc. This was not a thing in BL2.

With that in mind, You simply cannot put legendary class mods behind a trial boss.it’s un-farmable. It’s asinine. It’s bad design. It would take people forever to get the mod that actually fits their play style, and buffs stats relevant to them. They would have to run the entire trial all over again just to farm for one mod that might not always drop, and won’t always have the relevant stat increases. We know we all love when we get the atlas reload time buff as one of our passives on a legendary class mod

I see two solutions. Both or just one would suffice. I personally prefer #2

1. Class mods need to be focused so that getting one isn’t a mini lottery within a lottery
2. The trials areas themselves should have increased chance to drop the legendary mod in question, so you could potentially get more than 1 per run. Don’t just put the dedicated loot on the boss.

That is all. Hopefully this picks up steam(link it where ever you can). Leave a like if you agree. It’s unfortunate that legendary Class mods are in this state to begin with, but it was the hand we were dealt. Hopefully the developers see sense.

Final Edit of OP:
@Noelle_GBX
I wanted to @ a developer to bring attention to this thread. The discussion has dried up due to the overwhelming agreement. I didn’t want this thread to be lost to the developers behind the Holiday weekend. Happy Thanksgiving to all by the way.

[hughes8749]

It is already difficult enough sometimes to get those good rolls on class mods. I agree putting them in trials is complete asinine. And to make it to the end and not get the drop. Gotta use amara to speed run them and have a better chance at them dropping. Could do all the trials on an hour with her. Everyone else would take a day

[Crinklec112]

Yeah, feel the same way about the equipment drops tied to those sort of bosses too, like at the end of Cistern or Slaughterstar.

[jafortune]

The trials areas themselves should have increased chance to drop the legendary mod in question, so you could potentially get more than 1 per run. Don’t just put the dedicated loot on the boss.

This would seem fair with the way Gearbox wants to handle loot. These aren’t Boss/Miniboss farms that take a minute or two to do the full quit/reload/kill cycle. They’re 5-20 minute grinds just to run once.

[akiltheawesome]

I agree and disagree. The difference betwen the two issues is that once you finally get that gear, you are done. You don’t have to do it again, because you got the weapon in question that you needed. At the end of a trial run, you can get the class mod you wanted but get passive stats that have nothing to do with your playstyle. Which drives you to run it again.

Also for the slaughter rounds, all you have to do it lose the round where the loot source boss spawns and you can beat that enemy over and over to farm them. Just don’t kill the mobs and let them kill you. Beat the boss, lets the mobs kill you. rinse and repeat.

[Rabid_Explosions (PSN: iPayUrFrenZ)]

If you’re Amara (Gbx favorite) or Moze, you get 2 easily farmable mini bosses or w.e to farm.

Fl4k and Zane? They have to go through a whole damn gauntlet+ to even get the chance to fight the person who drops the mod.

I hate it. I’m a Fl4k player. Having to do the WHOLE trial of cunning to get to the boss and kill the boss and see if he drops it? If I don’t, or if I want another roll I have to do the WHOLE trial again? God I just want to shoot myself.

[kabflash (So many titles, so little impact.)]

I’d be fine with them being behind Trial bosses if the drop rate wasn’t ridiculous on those things. You can spend forever completing this super hard Trial on M4 then get nothing, no legendary drops. That is stupid as hell. Give the Trial bosses 100% chance to drop at least 1 thing out of their pool. And for god sake make it fair and gate Amara and Moze coms behind them too!! Who makes these decisions???

[akiltheawesome]

It’s crazy because some people scoffed at me when I made a post saying the game is centered around amara.

Many Things Are Geared Towards Amara. Other Vault Hunters Appear Under-cooked

Amara isn’t overpowered. She just has the best gear. Not calling for a nerf to Amara but It has become clear that she is the best character in the game. She has the best trees, she has the most playstyles, she has the best gear, she has the best anointed, she has the best artifacts, she has a build for every situation. Has has the most diverse class mods I will explain in detail why i feel the way I do and why the game needs to greatly expand on their gear diversity to bring the other vault hu…

I’m glad more and more people are realizing that amara is the favorite. That thread/Post I made a month ago has aged extraordinarily well

[kabflash (So many titles, so little impact.)]

I remember the topic, I gave it a heart. Amara mains are in denial, and its perfectly understandable. For one nobody wants to be told their VH is carrying them. Two nobody wants their favorite toy broken.

I’m in the bring everyone up to Amara’s level boat. Which GBX claims they are too, but if that’s what they are trying to do, they are failing harder then they did with creating (and supposedly fixing) the UI, and that’s pretty a damn hard fail.

[akiltheawesome]

the disparity between Vault hunter loot sources is crazy but no legendary COM should be dedicated to a trial boss in the first place due to the nature of legendary COMs. Id argue that at least some of Amara and Moze’s mods are done correctly while the Devs dropped the ball on everyone else’s

COMs should be farmable merely because of they have to much disparity within them. I could take 100 tries to get a class mod that has relevant stats

[bain]

So you’re basically saying buff my VH cause I need to be carried.

[kabflash (So many titles, so little impact.)]

Just love when people put words in your mouth!

Short answer: No.

Full answer: No.

Here’s the fun part. I personally play 3/4 VH’s regularly. Guess which one out of the 4 I stopped playing immediately after finishing TVHM because I found it boring.

I didn’t fully explain so I’ll cut you a break. I think all the VH’s need to be buffed to Amara’s level, if Amara’s level was where it would be at if the obvious broken things were ‘fixed’. ie- nimbus/ties that bind + do harm etc.

[akiltheawesome]

Putting words in people’s mouth seems to be a VERY common strategy on these forums

[kabflash (So many titles, so little impact.)]

So I just went through the Trial of Cunning on M4. While it wasn’t as hard as I imagined, it still took significantly more time and effort then farming Sylestro. I was rewarded with a “Expert Storm” yay a trash item for all that. fun.

[akiltheawesome]

i did the same. It was terrible. It actually took me the full time trial to beat it on my Cryo Zane(Beat the dino with 3 seconds left). It took half that on my unoptimize tediore zane. I got 4 legendary out of 2 full runs. All were garbage.

[kabflash (So many titles, so little impact.)]

Round 2 - Fought 3 Anointed Tinks on the way through - No legendary drops.
Round 3 - 2 Anointed Tinks - No legendary drops.
Round 4- A total of 4! Anointed Tinks in this one, 2 at once in the very first section. Finally got a class mod, good skills trash passives.

I’m on the fence here. The trial is not very hard for me to run on Fl4k. Though it is a 20 minute-ish time investment. 4 runs to get an end game class mod isn’t terrible. It’s definitely going to be farm-able for me. But not quite as easily as Amara or Moze can.

I do think if it’s going to be left this way, at least the chest needs to be more rewarding. So far 1 out of 4 isn’t a bad drop rate for the mod but we’ll see how it goes as I continue to run this.

[Cerberus108]

Well if it makes you feel any better Billy the Anointed hates me and is refusing to drop the Moze mod despite repeated kills. I am not really feeling the M4 increased drop chance.

[brandonlatzig]

I mean, its better than in bl2, where unless you know where chubby enemies spawn, you are just gonna have to wait a long time to get a chance at a legendary com

[Crinklec112]

At this point, I feel like grearbox should just make class mods guaranteed drops from some enemies. With 3 variable rolls on them, people are still going to run the content repeatedly for the perfect rolls they want, but at least then you can get something out of it, instead of wasting so much time for a chance to get the mod with garbage rolls. I disagree that it is necessarily better than BL2 as well since in BL2, class mods of a specific type generally did not have so many variables to their stats and the legendary ones in particular were static so you pretty much always got the best possible version and never had to grind for a new one.

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

Agreed. It’s particularily annoying with the new Class Mods for Zane and Fl4k because you have to complete a specific trial run (Instinct for Fl4k, Discipline for Zane) to even get a chance for one to drop (on Mayhem 4, mind you. Mayhem 4 trials are pretty damn tough in my experience). In the meantime Moze can farm Billy the Anointed who, whilst a much harder fight than the trials bosses, can at least be farmed in some reasonable amount of time and Amara follows her previous scheme of being treated better than any other playable character and can just farm Sylestro for that overpowered piece of gear that was put out by Gearbox in the same patch that had them state that they wanted other characters to catch up to her.
Plus, all the trials bosses have several class mods assigned to them, making the likelyhood of getting the one you need even lower.