Zane Synergies Workshop Thread

Borderlands 3 Zane the Operative
#1

This thread is intended for people to share specific gear and/or skill synergies that they’re discovering or working with, specific to Zane. To get the ball rolling, I’ll submit one to start.

Craps w/SNTNL cryo, playing dirty, CCC, banjo. (Ideally, radiation or shock Craps, but all work)

While Recursion + banjo is the current hot ticket, this set up has a few strengths that make it a strong contender. For starters, the ammunition efficiency is excellent. More importantly, there are multiple synergies at play here.

First, the sticky rounds from the Craps give two opportunities to proc CCC and the banjo. Impact and detonation can trigger each effect. With playing dirty, you’re obviously increasing the projectile count, which plays into that by adding extra proc opportunities. The anointment obviously plays well with CCC, and helps eat through armor, while most element rolls on the Craps will chew through flesh.

I’ve run this through the Takedown with a non anointed shock Craps and had great results, but radiation and the anointment are incredibly powerful together.

#2

Cool idea! Here are some others.

Trick of the Light: Trick of the light adds cryo to self splash damage. This means that we can cryo ourselves with weapons like the Protuberance or the Shrieking Banshee. How is this relevant? We can use this interaction to add ammo to our pack with the Transformer. Not necessarily a synergy, but good to know.

Trick of the Light and SNTNL: Trick of the Light adds damage to SNTNL’s shots. This can be used to great effect with a terror build and the “SNTL gains 100% lifesteal while affected by terror” anointment. Combine this with a loaded dice, and you can health gate very effectively and almost never die.

Cold Bore, Playing Dirty and a Projectile Recursion: Cold Bore adds cryo to our shots when swapping. This means when using a Recursion, it generates an extra projectile when shots ricochet (just like ASE elemental anoints do). We can use this to generate a total of 4 projectiles when ricocheting: 3 for ASE anoints on our gun, grenade and shield, and an extra with Cold Bore.

Another thing important to note here: If we swap away and back fast enough, we can get the Cold Bore cryo on a shot without losing the ASE element on our gun. Normally when activating an ASE anoint on a gun, and swapping to another gun and back, we lose the anointment. But, if swapping to and back instantly, we get the Cold Bore cryo, and don’t lose the ASE element.

Now, if we combine this with playing dirty, we generate even more projectiles. 2 projectiles fired, each spawning 4 new projectiles after a first ricochet means a total of 10 projectiles (2 originals, 8 new ones spawned). If we use a X2 Recursion, this gets us a total of 15 projectiles.

Seein Dead and Grenades: Seeing dead triggers off of grenades (and self DOT, but that is not important here). This makes Infinite Grenade Zane a very fun play-style. If you use a tracking grenade that spawns a lot of extra grenades, like the Cloning Maddening Tracker, you’ll basically never run out of grenades with 2 points in Pocket Full of Grenades and a Big Boom Blaster.

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#3

Grenades like Hex work of course with the clone as well (no need for Electric Banjo) who starts throwing out quite a large amount of grenades with enough enemies in range when the first grenade hits (no need to throw them yourself).

Futility Belt seems to be apply the appropriate resistances twice when kills skills are active, which makes DR reduction (mod, RR, shield ASE mod) a lot more effective. It looks like damage of the first shot gets calculated, then converted (even if it is already normal) and end damage calculated based on that calculated damage.
RR, FB and normal damage should be for example: 1/1.3 (RR actually has a 30% DR resistance, not 23% DR)*1/1.18 (same goes for FB, it’s an 18% normal damage resistance) * 1/1.3 * 1.18 = 42.5% (57.5% reduction).
(elemental damage seems get a bit more complicated which might have to do with recalculating elemental bonus/malus to normal).
Add Stiff upper Lip (19.5% damage resistance) and 18% DR from mod (this one actually displays the resistance value) and you get 75% reduced damage from normal attacks.
Extra projectiles seem to be not effected though.

#4

How do you know? We had a thread where the damage reduction scenario worked out very well with the values presented and the numbers on the card.
Edit: it was your thread…lol

#5

Yes, though I did a few more tests last week with an 18% DR mod which had me wondering about it giving 15% DR instead of 18.
I did stumble upon this thread: Damage reduction taken away?
At some point I realized that 1/1.18 equals 15% DR. 1/0.77 equals 30% and putting in the observed values for FB (1/observed value) and SuL (1/observed value/3) the most probable values for those were 18% for FB and 6.5% for every point in SuL (devs like nice looking numbers).
Put it in there (it’s only phys dam, DR and phys resistance are multiplicative to each other while additive within each other so it’s 1/(DR1+DR2) * 1/(PR1+PR2)) and the numbers suddenly align perfectly (within ±1 which can be explained with rounding).

I do want to test a bit more with elemental damage (I only did a short test which displayed a damage reduction of 64% and the damage formula that worked with that seemed to be 1/1.48 (RR+Mod) / 1.195 (SuL) /0.65 / 1.195 (Eledam-Conversion, for some reason effected by SuL) / 1.48 (2nd RR+Mod) / 1.375 (SuL+FB), so I am not sure about that one).

#6

Well in the other thread we used the formula 1x(1-DR)x(1-DR)x… and that matched the dmg numbers you got exactly. Maybe you try that again and it works without additive shenanigans.

#7

In terms of Anointments, I’m more curious about the advantages of “50% bonus Cryo while SNTNL active” versus “130% increased damage after swapping with Digi-Clone for a short time” in light of the Seein Dead COM.

Given Donnybrook stacking twice now and the retool to Quick Breather, there’s more incentive than ever to swap with the Clone as often as possible for optimal positioning, so keeping up the 130% boost isn’t nearly as much work as it used to be. At the same time though keeping up the Drone still works anyway given how far down you’re given incentive to go down the blue tree for maximum Seein Dead effects.

I could see using the 50% bonus Cryo for guns like the Brainstormer where the added Cryo does more for the gun than just adding more damage by itself would do, but everything else I’ve tested with a Drone/Clone build finds the 130% damage after swapping Anointment giving better returns. I walked through the Handsome Jackpot DLC on M4 with a 130% after swap Devastator after the Seein Dead dropped for me, and it wasn’t even an optimal one for skill points or stat bonuses. Between Playing Dirty always being up for increased projectiles and Violent Violence for fire rate, I was putting out damage so fast most enemies didn’t have the time to shoot me.

#8

Specifically within the context of solo takedown runs, I find that the clone dies too fast to be of value for anything other than fueling ASE anointments. When facing content where the clone stays up, the swap anointment can easily be better. All it takes is planning to swap within 10 second intervals.

#9

I did notice during my Wotan fight, that despite my Clone going down a few times, the cooldown was really short, because he rarely died with less than 3/4 duration left thanks to Seein Dead and GM.