Zane's Drone and Clone still needs buff

I know Zane has been getting plenty of buffs but in my opinion he’s still pretty weak, especially compared to Amara. Don’t get me wrong he’s still very fun to play, but some changes need to be made.

Drone’s Augment: The augments don’t really seem like to do anything except for the cryo damage augment. His missile barrage is weak as hell. The augment where the drone can fire a missile needs to be a normal thing and replaced with something like “The drone fires a beam laser that deals incendiary damage every 10 seconds to an area.” The shock augment needs to be buffed. It needs to deal a TON of damage to shields on enemies around the drone (it should be weak to health) and replenish Zane’s shields with ease. The radiation needs to actually have effect on enemies that’s near the drone. Make them go slower and barely attack while boosting Zane’s fire rate and movement speed by a lot more than it does now. Back to missile barrage. It’s the weakest augment and needs to do more damage, and have at least a cooldown so he can do it again to make up for the lack of accuracy. This will make the drone do good damage while also providing support. This augment change can make the drone either very helpful in crowd control or dealing a lot of damage to a boss.

Clone: The clone is very underwhelming. It barely shoots some guns u want it to shoot and it barely does damage. The augments are okay but the one where it distracts enemies needs to be longer and actually work. For the Clone itself, it needs to do be able to kill as fast as Zane or even faster than Zane which would be useful for bosses and help clear out enemies. I like the abilities but Zane’s clone also needs to switch to the weapon that Zane switches to and actually fire the weapon as fast as Zane. (When I tried to make it use pistol, it only fired once every 3 seconds smh) that’s basically it.

The barrier: The barrier is fine but I want one of the augments to give ammo regeneration for you and your team. Maybe make the shield shock a normal thing and replace it with ammo regeneration. If it’s too op please tell me.

" I know Zane has been getting plenty of buffs but in my opinion he’s still pretty weak, especially compared to Amara"

This statement is wrong. You either have an underwhelming build for highest difficulties, or your current feedback is based on pre-DLC Zane, or you have a lack of knowledge about what his skill tree gives you in terms of bonus. Zane atm can match Amara in terms of dps,especially with Seein’ Dead COM that allows you to proc kill skills simply by damaging foes. In fact, in terms of dps all VHs are mostly on an equal spot atm, only issue that makes some better than others raid wise/mobbing wise is survivability.

From what I read, it seems you’re annoyed with gagdets not being a click-to-oblitate-foes buttons when they’re meant, game design wise, to be assists. Hell, even Donnybrooke ability in orange tree reinforces that aspect: you get damage boost for each action skill active.

Zane is a trained assassin, he has kill skills he needs to proc in order to unlock its full potential. Gadgets/action skills may seem weak at first, but hey look, Devs made 100% cryo bonus anointments while SNTL is active (and SNTL has a looooong uptime, and if you spec into Good Misfortune from blue three + Seein’ Dead COM you actually almost never lose it, so enjoy perma cryo bonus dmg), swapping with Digiclones gives you a 130% bonus dmg with some anointments and it can have a pretty long uptime too with the good misfortune + Seein’ Dead combo.

Seein’ Dead, right anointments, are a complete game changer for Zane. In fact, anoints and com, alongside with tree synergy are completely game changing for every character (even though it kinda sucks if you’re a more casual player cause that requires a lot of farm to get right anointments/good roll gear for your build) so I would suggest you look them more in Zane’s case before throwing such a feedback. Not meant in a rude/harsh way at all.

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You may be correct but I will stand my ground that the drone’s augment except the cryo augment is very underwhelming.

I agree with that though. Sntl cryo dmg/digiclone swap dmg are those most people are using. Others feel pretty situational/for the memes.

When Amara can basically use ASE +100% very often with Phasegrasp/ Phaseslam +300%/Phasecast +250%. And with Avatar from blue three you can actually trigger Phaseslam/Phasecast one twice in a cooldown window. Not even going to mention that ASE +100% gets triggered even if you phasegrasp the ground so you can have perma +100% dmg.

Zane needs more variety in builds and anoints, but damage wise and survibability wise he’s in a very good spot rn.

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I think just because a class has very strong set-ups doesn’t mean they don’t need a buff. This goes for Zane and even Amara. Currently, Zane is very powerful because VM gives him alot of bossing potential and the Seein’ Dead is amazing for mobbing. But alot of aspects to the Drone and Clone still aren’t really scaling to M4. Buffing those things wouldn’t make Zane stronger per se, given the meta builds are exploiting different, more powerful mechanics already. I don’t think a Chain Zane would care if the Drone’s missile barrage did more damage, given the Redistributor can wipe a room in about 10s. Nor would Antifreeze builds care about buffs to the clone, given every boss is dead in about 5s anyway. But these things would go a long way in making other builds more interesting and viable.

Likewise, as much as Driver Amara or her anointments are busted, buffing her underperforming augments and scaling her AS damage to M4 wouldn’t break her, but just make her a better class overall.

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Not only that. All Class Mods except Seein’ Dead need a buff or a complete rework. Antifreeze is okay-ish but can use a small buff AND immunity to slow effect would make this a lot more useful. Not too sure about Infiltrator. The extra points in VM are nice but the shield gimmick is a bit weird. Maybe I’m using it wrong.

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I agree on the way clone handles his weapons. The AI is awful, if it’s using something like a vladof AR or infinity or lasersploder the burst fire he chooses to use is ridiculous, meaning some decent guns are just no viable in his hands.

Drone I disagree though. I love the cryo/radiation augment combination personally. I’m constantly freezing everything around and causing mass radiation combined with my clone spamming rad hive and a radiation redistributor, so I’m always getting good boost from the radiation augment perk while leaving a bunch of mobs frozen.

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GB says all characters are in a good place so it looks like only buffs we will be getting now are Coms and anointments. All characters have underperforming skills and AS and all we can do is try to bring attention to it.

W/O Seein Dead, Zane is still decent and I would say on-par with Fl4k, broken skills on each side for both.

I wonder if GB is play testing level cap to decide what they want to change and that they can not fix somethings without really messing up other functions.

I feel like at this point if we get any fixes on any characters skills/augments/current mods would be rare but welcomed.

Buffing anointments is great but it makes you much more luck dependent and very underperforming till you can acquire them. COMs need some updating to not be pigeon holed into one that is locked behind a paywall. Executor and infiltrator are ok ish for their builds but need some tweaking. To give non DLC coms some love:

  • RR needs to work with infiltrator rather than CCC IMO (unless they fixed that).

  • Techspert needs to not be based on kills to make it a viable single target com

  • or CCC needs to trigger Seein Red which would put Ex on par with Seein dead

The rest are almost pointless to run over executor or infiltrator.

Shield augments need to work while held would be a big game changer too.

Clone needs to be able to fire charged weapons for more variety, but if you want something good focus on high crit Jacobs.

If you are giving the clone an infinity or a vladof with double barrel you are missing the huge benefits of the clone and focussing on weapons that accentuate his weaknesses.
Yes the clone has aweful fire control. However the clone has decent accuracy (gave him a Maggie and can proc brain freeze on bandits at decent range). His biggest benefits are amazing reload speed and unlimited ammo. He can reload 75% faster than you and always fires in bursts… why give him an infinity!!
So give him guns that use massive amounts of ammo and have long reloads. Throw a scourge or a hive on him and watch him destroy leagues of mobs… Throw a cryo crossroads on him and watch him proc CCC for you all day long.
You don’t give splash damage Moze a monacle… It doesn’t play to her strengths. So play to the clones strengths. He isn’t good with some guns… so don’t give him those.

Oh I pretty much always use hive on him mobbing or Maggie on a boss, I’m just saying if he shot each gun the way a player logically would, it opens up more viable weapons to spawn him with.

Having the Clone always use whatever you have in your hands would be a huge detriment to the skill. The way you can mix and max and abuse mechanics is on of the Clone’s redeeming features.

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The Clone’s strongest asset is its own infinite ammo pool, give it a COV launcher and it’ll never stop firing. Chucka and Shreda launchers give you the most bang for you buck depending on the mob type or boss. Now that the 100% bonus Cryo Anointment is a thing, I’ve been trying to get Handsome Jackie to drop it on a Redundant Face-Puncher to see if it and a Cutpurse White Elephant would be a good combination for Seein Dead to exploit. Help boost the Clone’s actual damage output while still letting it regen Zane’s ammo.

As for the Drone, I look at it more as the Drone contributing anything at all in a viable fashion. Having it able to deal Cryo contributes to Freezing and Radiation deals with shields and adds movement speed and fire rate even in small amounts. The shield regen skill could be more effective, moreso I wish the Drone wouldn’t prioritize it over its other abilities.

people sntnl ugments is garbage

gbx: bonus cryo 50->100

people clone a.i is still bad weapon firing patterns are bad and some augments do not work or are too weak

gbx: swap dmg 70->130%

that is gearboxes way of getting characters to good place slap more dmg here and there and people stfu. in the end we get a shitass game to play but everyone is so happy about it and wll not be playing in a years time, same people who want to stick to their gear of level 50 and think they won’t get bored out of their minds using same 20 pieces of gear for every and any content in game.

i mean ffs they dropped in seein dead com which should tell one more than enough on how they are going about things this time around.

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Not to mention all the left augments on the barrier do not work while its held. Leaving you with the shock one which makes it really hard to see especially in split. Anointments are great but the grind to get to them means you have to deal with what were complaining about until you are lucky enough to get it to drop. Especially on console where load times are really harsh.