The Barrel Stuffing Zane build crush Mayhem 4 content

Borderlands 3 Zane the Operative
#1

Alright guys I spent days and days trying to solo M4 Wotan with Zane. In that process I tested tons and tons of combinations of mods, weapons, builds and everything else. This is what I feel is my strongest build for soloing any content in the game. When you sign up for a 4 person raid with a single Zane in the hardest difficulty in the game don’t think you can walk in with sub optimal gear. The end game requires the best of the best for Zane to even survive. Well with that being said here is what I feel what works best for Zane and I. This setup makes M4 Slaughter Shaft a walk in the park compared to the raid.

Playstyle: Run and gun! Get up close and personal show them who is boss. Get in their face and barrel stuff anyone who apposes. Pull out the big guns when you need to shred armor. Walk away from the piles of smoking corpses with a grin on your face.

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Solo M4 Zane Build.jpg2064×1177 569 KB

The build is very very tight, Zane needs 10-15 more skill points in the worst way. You could swap some points here and there in the blue tree depending on your gear and play style

Top Tier weapons:

Maggie and terror annointed cryo is a plus. I also am testing a purple jakobs shotgun with x21 pellet count and terror cryo that is performing very well for my 1st weapon slot.

Brainstormer and terror annointed cryo is a plus, this weapon shreds large groups like nothing.

My favorite: DIctators baby! I have collected alot of these and use different ones for different situations. If you watch my clip vs Kraken you will realize I melt him in mere seconds, armor is a joke vs a dictator.
I used a 6 X Corrosive with terror annointed cryo. Also I have a 3 x Cryo with terror annointed cryo that shreds and can maintain higher uptime with terror ammo regen.

Face Puncher to apply terror with melee. This is crucial to keeping your terror stacks up.

Transformer with terror ammo regen.

Grenade with terror annointed increase dmg and firerate. I have a piss nade but it doesnt matter.

Ice Breaker victory rush, extra mag, cryo efficiency and cryo dmg would be perfect.

Class mod: This is somewhat flexible depending on what weapons you want to focus on. I happen to have a godly mod for Jakobs weapons so I use an Executor class mod. Zanes new mod works well as does a Cold warrior with +5 synchronicity.

Here’s a quick demo of what Zane is capable of with end game gear. You can skip the maggie completely if you dont like clicking and sub in another dictator if you like those more.

Sorry about the buzzing audio, youtube is currently processing to overwrite it with a song.
Build and all my gear is at the end of the video.

10 Likes
#2

Good stuff man. Nice build and you played it very well. Just got back from reading a topic saying “Zane needs help” because he can’t do M4 content. Then the very next topic I see is this. <3

3 Likes
#3

Thanks! Don’t get me wrong Zane isn’t even close to the same level as the other Vault Hunters. His barrier makes him the best tank in the game but he struggles vs enemies he cannot freeze (bosses). The strongest Zane bossing build (tediore chucking) makes him not as fast paced and fun to play vs mobs. Zane needs better class mods not this silly stuff where he depends on running around like sonic for extra dmg.

7 Likes
#4

Well I think he has a lot more options for bossing then just chucking personally. I just tailor my build to each boss. For example I’ve shown a GW build that insta kills him on M4 with Scourge. Then I use a cutsman build to kill Agonizer before break. And I have another build for Traunt and so on.

I agree with his class mods being the worst of the worst in the game. Exectutor is pretty good and I actually like the anti-freeze (I enjoy it’s jumping gimmick and the speed gimmick both) but that one needs something just a little more like say cryo immunity or more damage vs frozen. I hardly ever use CCC builds btw, though I do enjoy those too. The other thing he is lacking in is the Anointment department in my opinion.

He has also has some out of the box thinking type mobbing builds as well that can be fun and strong. For example I’m currently running a Vladof Underbarrel rocket build with him in the trial of cunning with a lot of success.

He isn’t quite on par with everyone, but in reality he isn’t that far behind at all. And I do tire of quotes like “Zane is weak” “Zane can’t do M4” and the like. Videos like yours help to prove it’s just not the case.

The one thing I think that causes people to think he’s so bad. His builds are generally not ever ‘one build to rule them all’. Generally they are good at one thing or another but not all things.

Also currently we have very important skills not working such as “Quick Breather”, this one is hitting me hard due to not using CCC builds much.

4 Likes
#5

Sorry for bossing I was thinking Wotan specifically. I agree 100% with you Zane can melt most of the Bosses in the game with a different build / gear setup for each. There is no one fits all build for Zane that can do everything. I love Zane because he has so much build diversity. I’m playing around with a max move speed build using Flakker / hive, because who needs to aim when sliding lol.

2 Likes
#6

If the anti-freeze mod gets buffed damage against frozen target, I will have an aneurysm. I think going fast anti-synergizes with brain freeze, so itd be the worst to put a passive like that on. The issue is with the way the Developers handle Zane, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did that. Id put increased damage on frozen targets on cold warrior personally. Or make a whole new mod entirely for it.

Cryo immunity tho, we agree NEEDS to be on the anti freeze mod. Idiotic and bad design you can be slowed down at all really

3 Likes
#7

lol seriously though. It’s called “anti-freeze” for gods sake.

2 Likes
#8

Why two points in cold bore? If you just want the cryo boost, one is enough. I’d leave that at 1 and put a point in drone delivery for two free grenades at minimum, more with good CCC usage.

1 Like
#9

You can switch those points up how you like. I swap weapons so often I wish I had room for 5 points in cold bore. The odd chance SNTL hits a piss nade on something isn’t worth the point to me. If I was going to remove a point from cold bore it would go into salvation.

#10

It can also trigger grenade anointments, so if you have that 25% damage after throwing a grenade, it basically keeps that active by default about 40% of the time.

1 Like
#11

Agreed Cold Bore for me is almost always about swapping speed, cryo is a bonus.

It actually seems to hit quite often but it really depends what you are fighting because a debuff on a trash mob isn’t going to mean much.

This is my favorite use, very good.

1 Like
#12

Thats very good to know, I will keep that in mind for other builds thanks!