Take Anointments, for example. Even if you just ignore stuff like Amara’s crazy bonuses, other characters have ways of significantly enhancing their anointment bonuses.
Moze, for instance. The Anoint that gives +50% elemental for the next two clips, might as well be a permanent bonus for a bottomless mags moze. Anointments that proc on skill end can be spammed indefinitely by a Rakk Attack Fl4k.
By contrast, Zane can either choose to have 50% bonus elemental damage when SNTNL is active, or he can choose to only get his anointments after his action skills have ended - but when that happens, he also loses a significant portion of his damage, since much of it is tied to having his action skills active!
And the Anointments Zane CAN effectively use - sliding and airborne bonuses - are typically less than the other alternatives, even though they’re realistically less consistent and more difficult to use.
The other Vault Hunters are simply better equipped to exploit the bonuses offered by most Anointments.
Then consider weapons. Take Maliwan Weapons, for example.
Maliwan Guns have a charge-up time. That’s pretty much insignificant on Moze; she can run while charging up and while shooting, and because she can shoot virtually forever, she never has to charge up twice. Amara has a skill that can shorten the charge-up time to almost nothing. And Fl4k deals the most damage while stationary, so having to pause to charge up doesn’t particularly hurt him.
But Zane needs to be moving! He gets the largest part of his damage while in the air or sliding, which offers a very limited time window. By the time he finishes charging a weapon up to fire, he will have lost the vast majority of his potential damage.
This also applies to a great number of other weapons. All guns with a windup time, for instance; Zane can’t really use them effectively, because it slows him to a walk and costs him a HUGE amount of damage! And how about the guns that offer increased damage the longer you hold the trigger? Moze can get 250% damage from them, Zane will at best compensate for his lack of high speed movement, and likely lose damage overall.
This is why you end up seeing a lot of Zane players essentially forced into using a Maggie; it’s one of a very few weapons that has decent DPS output without needing to waste critical time to activate it.
And that’s not even optimal for him! Playing Dirty functions very poorly with the Maggie, giving only about 16% of its maximum bonus at best! Only the Lyuda really offers everything he could need, but of course, he doesn’t have the ammo supply to sustain it.
Realistically, the weapons that would work best for him are sniper rifles like that, but unfortunately, most snipers do far less damage than equivalent pistols and SMGs.
Another problem is with enemy AI. Many of them have perfect aim, most notably those guys with rocket launchers or sawblade guns. Moving fast and dodging around is only an effective strategy if it actually reduces the chances of enemies hitting you. But against enemies with perfect aim? Moving fast just makes it harder for the PLAYER to hit enemies. If it weren’t for the recent boost to Violent Momentum, running fast would be virtually unusable. Even as it is, it’s taking a great risk for a marginal benefit. Other characters can sit back in cover and protect themselves, but Zane is FORCED to sprint into combat, putting himself at risk for greater performance.
So really, much of the problem isn’t just Zane’s skills. Which isn’t to say they couldn’t use some help, but even if they did get help, he’d still be hamstringed by a game that seems determined to deny him options.