Is Iron Bear good now?

Borderlands 3 Moze the Gunner
#1

I’m curious if Iron Bear got a buffed or is he as bad as people siad at launch.

#2

Depends on what you want to do at what level. For general running through the story in NVHM/TVHM, Iron Bear is great. I’ll let the Moze Pros address max mayhem and hardest content, though.

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#3

Iron Bear has been buffed a lot. He was almost completely useless on Mayhem 3 at launch, but is now usable on Mayhem 4 even by non-Iron Bear focused builds. He can’t handle most bosses, Circles of Slaughter and Maliwan Takedown on Mayhem 4 very well, but he is far from bad.
Some of his weapons are still underpowered, though.

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#4

Iron bear is great now on mayhem 4. However you are shoe horned into going down the Demo tree to max out Vampyre and are forced to use splash damage weapons only because you will NEED to constantly refill your armor by dealing splash damage , otherwise he still dies in seconds. His armor on it’s on isnt nearly enough even with recent buffs.

Besides that limitation and some bugs regarding right arm not getting all damage bonuses you unlock from some skills etc , hes fantastic. I use him a ton on M4 and wipe entire groups of enemies. I use one explosive mini and one cryo. Works great. Only issues is against badass rocket spammers and annointed enemies one shotting you but those are issues with moze or any character besides Amara really .

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#5

When trying to solo the raid, Iron Bear as an action skill accomplishes the following:

  1. Temporary immunity while you wait for the animation to get into the bear (but you can’t shoot your guns, so…)
  2. A couple of shots while you exit the Bear as fast as you can (the shots will not harm anything in a material way)
  3. Temporary immunity while you wait for the animation to get out of the bear, meanwhile all enemies will have fired area of effect weapons that will hit you upon exit (again, you can’t shoot your guns)

There are two reasons to get into the Bear:

  1. Trigger ASE anointment effects.
  2. Get a chance to fill up your shields if you are in a pinch.

As action skills go, IB remains among the worst in the game.

What? I’m not sure if this is a joke or not.

Moze is substantially stronger than IB when she is outside of IB. I listed the only 2 reasons to use Moze’s action skill above. Unless you’re just trying to use IB because you like using IB… Maybe there is a “fun” factor, but you’ll do exponentially more damage outside of IB.

#6

Your DPS with the vanilla rockets pods is pretty high until you hit a reload. Even then, being behind the wheel makes you effectively invulnerable for as long as you have fuel.

I’ve actually grown to love Auto Bear. If you place him right, he will effectively double your DPS while drawing aggro.

The biggest game changer that GBX could do for Moze is give us a ‘summon Auto Bear’ button.

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#7

Just make sure that the “summon Auto Bear” button triggers ASE anointment effects.

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#8

Most def.

#9

And counts as exit early.

3 Likes
#10

IB is decent for Wotan if you have the Specialist Bear perk and slot dual Corrosive (edit) Sabot Rounds.

The first time my group of three cleared Wotan on MH4 before we were able to farm it for drops and subsequently each able to solo it thereafter, I used this combo to deal some pretty heavy damage to Wotan. I mean yeah, I couldn’t take very much damage before I was forced out lol but if Wotan was in its armor phase this setup did some serious damage and enabled us to skip some adds.

Edit: spelling.

#11

There are different strategies for IB.

I run Moze stripped down to damage with a splash damage mod. So I use IB as an Oh S#$! I’m going to die button. After a couple seconds of shield recharge I hop out. IB draws aggro and does dps. I use the grenade launcher with the 5 grenade burst in the demo tree. Now that vampyr heals IB, you can sustain till the end of your fuel.

I run this because it allows me to actually kill enemies. Running shield of retribution or bottomless mags doesn’t give you as much damage and can sway your opinion on whether IB is good or not. Either way you have an invincibility mech that deals some damage whatever way you choose. It’s pretty OP. If you run a shield that grants immunity to damage and a last stand artifact, you literally have 3 invincible items. One you can ride in and do damage as well. And if you have a friend, they can ride too. Charge them gas money though.

So, is Iron Bear good now? I think he’s great. There are anoitments that work when IB is active and others that don’t need any action skill to use.

Happy killing! Welcome to the Doom squad!

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#12

The Railgun of Iron Bear is still trash.
Seriously, Gearbox need to buff the RAILGUN.

Only Explosive Minigun and Grenade launcher are good to use.
I use Explosive Minigun mostly all the time.

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#13

I run Ron Bear on M4. I get by with only 2(sometimes 3) points in Vampyr for IB sustain. I regularly run SS and such with and have no problem staying up.

I run a Blast Masta com with 2 in Com but otherwise run an 11/20ish/11. I normally just grab Exp. Munitions, SFtR then Auto.

Use Vanquisher/Exp. Bullets.

Either Transformer or Mendels Multivitamin w shield annoint.

Does well.

I’m still in the hunt for a Raging Bear with +3 Stroke.

#14

There is one more reason to use Iron Bear: Some for the road

This skill + rocket launcher especially the “Scourge” and “Hive”.
Enemies dies fast and really fun!!
I’ve been using this for a long time.

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#15

All of the non-splash hardpoints suffer from the fact that they don’t refill IB’s health and don’t benefit from many of Moze’s best class mods.

Also corrosive railguns work really well on the Takedown, including on Wotan.

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#16

Iron Bear is great.

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#17

I just watched your video. Pretty dope lol glad to see someone wrecking it with IB

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#18

After watching @GimmickBuilds explosive minigun, I’m gonna give that a shot next time I dabble with my Moze.

You are correct that the railgun is in dire need of a buff. However, I’ve made surprisingly adequate use out of the corrosive railgun on armored enemies even on MH4.

#19

Yeah, IB is halfway good. Really great if you get Vampyr and use rockets or explosive minigun. You can facetank most badasses and just plow through enemies. But IB suffers the same problem Moze does, though-- without splash weapons and Vampyr you’re going to die very quickly with no way to sustain yourself. Non-explosive IB weapons are very good damage-wise, but without the healing Vampyr provides, they just become a liability.

Apparently Gearbox doesn’t really care that Moze is forced down one tree or they would have fixed it a while ago, which would be easily done if they actually changed Force Feedback into something USEFUL instead of a gimped version of Shield Reboot, thereby giving her an alternate source of sustainability.

#20

Not this **** again… I thought we were over this stale argument when Ib got his huge buffs.

I’m specced mostly down demo tree and halfway thru other trees. I’m not fully specced into a SOR moze . With all the splash damage bonuses and vampyre etc and the weapon loadouts, my IB is pretty tanky and I regularly kill at least 10 enemies or 2 -3 badasses everytime i pop in. Hes perfectly viable aside from the build limitations I mentioned in my prior post

People like you just expect IB to be an instant win button . That’s not what it is. Its not to replace moze but to complement her and get her out of tight spots while also dealing a ton of damage in a short amount of time .

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