I’ve mained Moze for the better part of 1,000 hours. After playing the same character, fighting the same bosses, trying out all of her coms, I got bored and decided I should play a new character. I have a maxed out Flak, so it was between Zane and Amara. Zane it was.
Holy crap! Now, I knew that Moze wasn’t the most powerful, most tanky playable character. But, I thought she held her own very well. Yeah, it took me several hundred hours to perfect her skills and equipment. None of my friends that I regularly play with used Moze, and my Moze was just as powerful as their Amaras, Flaks and Zanes. I just figured Moze was a bit more complex and it took awhile to make the right build.
Have you ever been faced with a challenge, that no matter what you did, no matter what tool you used, it just wouldn’t get any easier? Yet, you were doing it better than most around you? Zane made it feel like I was given that extra strength, that made it feel like there were no weaknesses or short comings. Here’s why:
Moze’s weaknesses vs Zane
Survival
—Moze- no heath regen skills, other than Vampyr which requires grenades which is hit or miss with malfunctioning MoD
—Zane- multiple health regen skills and barrier action skill (huge impenetrable dome shield). Continue to damage enemies and barrier stays active. Not to mention Zanes movement speed increases with kills. So you have both a giant dome around you but you can also dodge enemy hits with ease.
Damage output
—Moze- requires very specific items and anointments to be considered powerful, which still lacks in DPS compared to other VH’s.
—Zane- multiple skills that boost damage. Barrier amps damage. Freezes enemies with crit hits. Damage increases with movement speed. Any weapon type can be used. Anything with SNTNL Cryo anointment and Barrier is very powerful. Redistributor with SNTNL and Barrier is godly. Like you can wipe out 5 or 6 Hardened Badass Zealots in slaughter shaft simultaneously under 5 seconds. Heck, you can complete slaughter shaft in 20-30 mins.
Grenade Regen
—Moze- MoD is buggy, sadly. Her survival and health regen depends heavily on this skill. When it works, I’d say you roughly regen 1 grenade every 5 seconds. Realistically, when you need them the most, they don’t regen at all.
—Zane- has a grenade regen skill that allows you to spam grenades constantly. Throw a grenade every 2 seconds if you want. The grenade regen is guaranteed, not by chance, by a percentage of total grenade capacity. Why Moze doesn’t have this same exact grenade regen mechanism is beyond me. It works and works very well.
Self inflicted damage by splash
—Moze- accidentally run in front of a wall, or enemy and splash yourself? Instant death. Shoot the flaker too close to a wall or ceiling, dead.
—Zane- ha, barrier, splash away!
Action Skill activation/deactivation time and cool down
—Moze- takes time to hop into Iron Bear, and then out of Iron Bear. If you do just this, then cool down is basically non-existent. If you use Iron Bear, cool down can be quite lengthy, unless you’ve decided to remove skill points that help Moze’s damage or survival and opt for reduced cool down.
—Zane- 2 action skills active at 1 time. Instant activation. Most of Zanes anointments are during action skill, not ASE. Short cool downs, sometimes just 5 seconds.
Kill Skills
—Moze- DiB, PD, Grizzled, requires actual kills to activate
—Zane- 10 kill skills, can be activated by just damaging enemies or activating an action skill. Don’t even need to kill anyone to get kill skills lol.
Moral of the story is, if you’re tired of not having enough survivability, damage output, grenades, kill skills, or don’t like Iron Bear, give Zane a try. He’s the closest thing to Moze and is insanely powerful and impenetrable.
True Takedown Mode in M4, Solo, is a walk in the park.
We all know Moze is by far the weakest VH currently, and Zane is currently the best. His Seein’ Dead com is extremely broken and I don’t know how they even went through with it when coming up with the idea.
Moze is the slowest, has the most inconsistent healing, and the weakest action skill which also isn’t very convenient to activate ASE with (which further disincentivizes weapon swapping). Her best builds mostly force her to use certain types of weapons and she doesn’t have the freedom to effectively use all gear. Hell, for one of her best coms you aren’t even allowed to reload, let alone just damage enemies to become near invincible and activate all your kill skills.
I’ve been considering starting up a new VH as well. I was thinking flak or amara.
Hit the nail on the head. I’m assuming the reason why she’s received the least amount of love when it comes to patches and hot fixes, is because she’s the least played character. I could be wrong, but I’m assuming because of the negative image that’s been painted for her.
I don’t see myself going back to her anytime soon, not until she gets a new class mod that’s OP or at the very least her MoD skill is fixed. Hard to believe the amount of time I invested in her, when I could have farmed twice as much loot with another character lol.
My two mains are zane and moze . Both perfect builds and god rolls on gear. Moze is a deathless bloodless build and zane is sentinel/ barrier cryo build.
Zane is obscenely OP. I call him Easy Mode.
His barrier than essentially gives him 99% damage reduction is unfair
His ability to freeze enemies solid with every few crits is unfair
His ability to ignore literally every shield or health skill cause his barrier is so good is unfair
His ability to have an annointment that adds an obscene 100% cryo damage to all gun damage is unfair
His ability to easily keep all his skills up 100% of the time with one measly point in calm,cool, collected is unfair
His Seein Dead COM is unfair and lets him bypass an entire capstone skill
The whole thing about the guy is unfair .
What pisses me off the most is that within a month of release, GBX nerfed Moze and her MoD skill and Hex grenades to the ground, meanwhile zane with his 100% uptime of the barrier making him essentially invincible was somehow just fine
I love zane though. I play with him whenever I’m in the mood for some relaxing sessions since I never die . However that’s boring . I cant make him any better nor is there a reason to.
Moze despite her optimized build is still a challenge and I’m always tinkering with her. I also love IB and it’s my favorite action skill.
I played countless hours of Zane and yes I did love him. Seein Dead got me bored, he used to be a challenging and interesting VH like Moze and now he’s braindead and you get everything for free. I actually stopped playing Zane for the most part to come back to Moze as a main. I personally like a class that challenges me to constant think and rethink and try different approaches to be successful and yet still offers difficulty in completing content. Breezing through everything like Driver Amara or Seein Zane is just boring to me. That’s not to say I don’t sometimes enjoy the power, I still run around with some broken ass Zane builds but as a main I much prefer the difficult to build and play Moze. I spend a lot of time on Fl4k as well who is in the same category of Moze in that respect.
Agree 100%, and I’m also not complaining. I enjoy being OP for the time being. Even if Moze had 1 of everything you listed, that would help tremendously. Imagine if Moze had a Barrier. You could bypass the entire blue tree if you wanted to concentrate on shield size, mag size and gun damage. Nope, Iron Bear gets one lol.
Moze has my heart, for sure. The change of pace with Zane is nice for the time being. I agree with Flak and Moze being in the same category of challenge. I prefer Moze, simply because her splash builds are more fun and exciting than Kinetic/crit Flak. I can solo Takedown with either one, but not in True Takedown mode. They both need help in the health/survival areas.
Yeah I’ve only played moze since release and I enjoy her for that reason. Same reason I was leaning to play flak next if I get around to it. Moze could absolutely use some love though.
The fastest m4 takedown is by flak using a lucky 7. I think like undr 6 mins or something like that. What i’m saying is any VH is viable as long as they’re geared right.
No it was true takedown scaled to four. It happened before they fixed the scaling. Yea Fl4k can be a beast. He doesn’t need damage just some survivabilty.
Yeah there are some edge-case gimmicks for Fl4k. Like using Stagecoach to instantly get FA CD. But all around for the most part Fl4k struggles in True Takedown due to damage mitigation. Agree the damage Fl4k does is more then ok.
A lot of comparisons here between Fl4k and Moze. I main Fl4k but I have played moze a fair amount. Moze needs more love than Fl4k, plain and simple. While Fl4k is still mad squishy compared to Zane/Amara he can still put up some healthy dps. I really, like REALLY struggle with Moze to find the punch needed to feel as powerful as Fl4k.
I wish the VH’s in BL3 had more specific roles in co-op situations. For instance I feel like Moze should be the front line tank, deal less damage but be nearly invincible. Amara would fit in with crowd control and some damage while also being very hard to bring down. Zane should be the distraction to help single problematic enemies away with his gadgets. Fl4k should be long range support and have the highest damage, lowest survivability when confronted head to head. I hate the direction that they took Zane in that he can do anything solo that it should take all 4 characters in tandem to accomplish. The toughest content on the hardest difficulty shouldn’t be a walk in the park solo.
Salvador was my least favorite character in BL2 for this reason. Yeah it was fun once and again to cheese away raid bosses, but in reality it was so dry compared to the challenge of OP10 Krieg/Zero.
Moral of my rant is Zane is truly OP, Moze needs some well earned attention.
I agree, each character should be strong at one thing, bad at another. Problem is finding that balance so that any player can complete the game with any character. They all need to have OK damage and OK health. Their skills should compliment a play style and gun type. For example:
Moze: Front line, tank/max armor, smg, assault and grenades. Iron Bear would be fine if it could wipe out the crowd, considering its long cool down.
Flak: quick on his feet, max damage from a distance, sniper and pistol specialist. Camouflage skill that boosts mvmt speed and damage reduction. Sharp shooter skill that gives a huge damage buff to sniper rifles.
Zane: tech nerd, demolitionist, barrier shield is fine (tech), heavy weapon specialist, should be the protector of those on the front by supplying allies with barrier and ammo regen
Amara: magic, elemental, healer, applies elemental or magic damage to any weapon type, kinetic damage is low compared to other VH’s. Has action skills that inflict damage on enemy, or heals self/allies, or buffs gun damage on self/allies, or freezes, burns, electrocutes, corrodes, irradiates enemies.
This isn’t an MMO though. Coop skills are great, but class specific roles are a big no no.
Also, maybe this is just me, but I don’t get this OP. If I’m playing a character, I’m playing it for their gimmicks, not their power. I know what interests me about Moze is her mech, leaning towards auto bear. Zane is kinda close with the clone, but they don’t feel that similar at all. I don’t see how I would love Zane if I like Moze just because he is more powerful for the moment. Heck, come the next DLC Moze may get her own Seein Dead and trounce him.