Took me a little while to realise that it’s anointments that have ruined this game.
Youtube, reddit or google builds and they all revolve around using your action skill as nothing more than a proc for your anointments. Not saying you cant make builds that are geared towards using your action skill but by far the most optimal way to play is to use it for the anointment buffs. And when the hardest content in the game becomes aimed at these builds thats a problem I think.
I know it’s not going to change because it’s a core part of the game but gearbox if you are listening, leave it out of any future games. As if getting the perfect role on all your gear wasn’t hard enough now you have to get the anointment to.
Cue the fanboys
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I agree that in order for an average player to beat the highest level content in a reasonable amount of time one needs nearly all anointed gear. For me, the difference is like night and day. I wouldn’t go so far as to say anointments have ruined the game, though. It’s more the endgame. And it takes a long time to get there!
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Luneshines in TPS was done right although it’s lacking in more choices. By the way Luneshines are pretty much equivalent of annointeds in this game. Way too much annointeds here require AS activation and to end it. I miss Luneshines that instantly give that gun extra crit damage or extra explosive damage, and such.
If it wasn’t for ASE then I’ll feel better of switching my guns without worrying about using that one gun for full ASE bonus. Right now they’re sliding and jumping that aren’t useful. The jumps would’ve been nice in TPS grav-jumping. BL3 needs non AS related annointeds that are instantly active as you hold that gun out.
I… really… like the direction how Luneshines went. Nothing needed to proc to active it
Edit: On terms with how everything is needed for annointments to go through in likes of Mayhem 4 I hate it. It makes things to tedious and ties around annointments needed to squeeze more DPS out in most enemies. Even tanky mobs. They’re too much garbage annointments too which makes farming for one an absolute pain to go through. I just hope they scrap the annointments and do it over or follow how it was done with Luneshine
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Essentially, all they did was add another meta tier. Then they fooled everyone buy letting it rain legendaries. The funny part was watching people beg for the drop rates to be reduced. The whole time I sat here thinking “these people don’t understand what they’re asking for.”
I’ve been playing games for far too long. I saw this coming as soon as they were introduced.
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Anointments are cool. They can turn A guns into S guns given the gun has a good anointment. They are good for build diversity and they make you try out new guns.
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I run a Rakk Attack FL4K. Having multiple “on Rakk Attack use” or general ASE, my guns can RIP through enemies. Having a Hellwalker with 100 damage ASE, or a Maggie with 50% bonus crit damage ASE, or even my Bekah, which eats Graveward alive. You kind of need stuff like that for content like M3 and M4, no?
Complaining about farming for specific stat stuff to play high level end game stuff is kinda pointless. Its the nature of high difficulty raid games. Where you should address your concirns is to tubers and guide makers to make build guides for leveling and and gearing up guides. Main thing GB needs to address is lvl 49 gear dropping when your on lvl 50 so if you happen to get the anoint on the gun you need its at the right level.
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I agree the Anointment system really hurts the game - but more because of GB decision to make certain Anointments stronger than others - in particular ASE anointments. It really doesn’t make much sense - why would you have classes strategize to use their action skill as little as possible? Seeing the current Fl4k FA meta is really tragic - people are using 3 shot FA on high FR weapons just so they can capitalize on ASE bonuses. Or Amaras Fakegrasping. Or Splash Moze entire gameplay loop involving her going through a clunky animation in and out of IB. Its uneccesarily constraining and ruins the real action skills in the game.
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As a pretty big end-game player, I’ve gotta say that I’m not really a fan of annointments at all. Especially the way they work for my main, Moze.
Action skill end(ASE) annointments make me feel super locked into one weapon in order to get the most out of that annointment.
Here is a game that is designed around matching elements, so therefore, encourages weapon swapping, but at the same time it really pressures you into not swapping weapons(in order to keep that ASE active). It feels counterproductive.
I dislike the way annointments are implemented. It feels rigid, stale and unfun as a game mechanic.
Like I said above, it is a particularly bad feeling on Moze since her action skill generally had a far longer cooldown. Therefore after I exit Iron Bear and have an annointment active it makes it feel punishing to swap to another weapon to deal with arising situations.
All annointments seem to do is force players into a style of play where finding one “do it all” gun is the best way to succeed. Which sucks, especially in a game with so many weapons.
Some annointments feel a little better such as “on grenade throw” and “consecutive hits” but the action skill end annointments are just really bad.
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Honestly, the game really isn’t great at encouraging swap styles at all. Even my Rakk Fl4k sticks to a single weapon most of the time. I’ll switch what it is, but it’s just more logic to focus on that one weapon in most scenarios.
Then weapons like the Tankman’s Shield exist where switching away from them even once makes them useless. I haven’t found a single build that makes the Tankman’s feel worth the price of entry either.
The problem with Anointments is that they feel like they were supposed to help people who didn’t wanna swap weapons bypass the elemental resistance threshold, but then built the enemies around you being able to do both.
There’s got to be an answer somewhere. But the hardest part is that the game has to decide whether they want us to swap or not. And that’s probably gonna be a future round of anointments: when swapping to this weapon.
I hope.
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Most of my Anointed gear is incidental - I was more interested in the item than the Anointment that happened to be on it. The few times it’s been the other way around, the Anointment hasn’t been a game changer. The most useful have been ‘the next couple of magazines have bonus elemental damage’ on Bottomless Mags Moze, but the bonus damage isn’t impressive enough to make me want to go above M1.
I agree a lot with the OP.
Annointments shouldn’t be so reliant on ASE. So many of them are and like OP said, it gives birth to “tactics” like non stop fakegrasping or using IB for auto bear only .
Then there are the utterly useless ones thrown in to the already bogged down pool, like annointments based on being airborne or sliding . The airborne might have worked in TPS but here?
I agree annointments should have been more like Luneshines : allowing you to add extra effects to your favorite weapons. Key word is ALLOWING. Meaning like collecting Luneshines then using them to “annoint” your favorite weapons, youd collect something and use that to anoint your favorite weapon.
While it’s too late to change the existing annointments , I dont think it’s too late at all to add ability to add annointments to your gear and introduce more annointments that dont rely on Action skill usage at all
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That’s fair.
However, for dabbling in M4 the anointment can make or break the entire build. It would be nice if anointments were reduced down to having a smaller impact, and as such enemy health was reduced to compensate.
Like for my Fl4k, as soon as gamma burst wears off I can really feel the struggle for damage since all my gear is 115% rad. I’d love it if anointments were nerfed into the ground, and my gamma burst anointment was a measly 10% rather than 115. It’s just silly to me that I can have two of the exact same guns with same attachments and everything, but one literally more than doubles the other in damage. Crazy.
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Everyone is missing my point. Farming is fine but not when you are doing it to render you action skill obsolete. Main issue i have is that 3 games down the line they still cant make action skills the power mode they should be. We should be working hard in firefights to earn them so we can dish out the damage and survive to see the loot drop but instead it’s just an annoying thing we have to do to get buffs. Might as well get rid of them and just press the button every 120 seconds for anointments or something.
If anointments weren’t in the game or at least did all revolve around action skills then it wouldn’t matter. They should have kept it simple like extra 10% fire damage or 15% faster reload speed that sort of thing.
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Nothing about action skills are obsolete, though.
To me, this thread is actually more about M4 (which isn’t a permanent solution for the game) and the general design of anointments and how they don’t necessarily synergise with types of gameplay (like weapon swapping).
There are some good criticism here, but “action skills are obsolete” isn’t one, and really just seems to be your personal desire for how you’d design a Borderlands game.
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Yea they are. Watch a moze build guide your action skill does a fraction of the damage if your weapons even when its an offensive skill like phaseslam.
Yes it is my opinion that action skills which take a long time to recharge should be very significant to how a firefight develops. They should not be a chore to use and I certainly shouldn’t be better off not actually using them by just phaseslaming on the spot to get the buff quickly instead of trying to group up enemies and hit them all.
Tbh it’s not opinion its fact. Gearbox clearly intended for action skills to be used the way i think they should so they agree with my “personal” design ideas. They have just so far failed to achieve that .
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I propse a solution
Moze after exiting iron bear change to x% extra splash damage for each enemy killed in iron bear. For example
Amara x% damage increase based on how much damage was dealt to the phaselocked enemy.
You get the idea.
Play moze or Amara and you will not like ASE anointments. Flaks rak attack is a really quick fore and forget skill so you don’t realise how frustrating it is to have your action skill rendered completely worthless for anything other than procing buffs.
Every. Single. One. Of my characters uses and benefits from their actual action skill on m4. Slam grasp and cast Amara’s. Mozes. Rakk burst and fade Fl4k. Every possible Zane.
There’s many criticisms to be levied against the anointment system. But if your action skills are worthless, that’s on you.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it forever: you have to work to make things work in m4. You can’t just ignore the skills that affect your action skill and say “my action skill is worthless” because you didn’t spend the time and energy to make it work.
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Im leveling my moze and with Level 49 now I have a few ASE anointments. It feels Kind of dump to jump in Auto Bear just to leave it. I would like to see rather anointments like “while in autobear, autobear gets 50% more damage”. I dont know, ASE seems not to Match with mozes skills and other anointments are just trash in comparison to ASE.
Zane has while SNTL is active anointments. If it woudnt exist it wout be the same issue…
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