When the level cap increase comes out I feel the blue tree will be lacking even more because of the cap stone. Megavore and the power inside grant massive power increases and combined will be an absolute powerhouse. Then you got dominance which is by far the worst capstone in the game and if you use gamma burst it will automatically be devalued by the green and red trees because there caps far outweigh the Blues.
5 Likes
Actually, Blue + Red tree still has a potentially higher Damage roof than Red + Green with the level cap increase. However, the main problem is Frenzy being an unreliable mess, especially on Rakk builds. But strictly speaking, when everything is stacked up, Red + Blue should still outpace Green + Red in damage, just by a smaller margin this time. Frenzy being a Hunter Skill is a main part of it, but with the level cap it is just a way less consistent choice for Rakk/Fade than the reliable Damage from Power Inside.
Gamma will get a good boost with 5 points in Furious Attack, since Gun Damage is actually something that it kind of lacks compared to other setups. Of course, a great Capstone would be preferable, but in effect this acts as a very important damage increase.
I would personally like Rakks to have a feature akin to the Hunter Seeker grenade in practice: count as pet damage (gun damage in the Hunter Seeker’s case), but not get affected by its boosts. This would make Rakk builds have a real choice between Green/Blue since the Rakks would stack Frenzy and trigger Who Rescued Who. It would be a choice between squeezing out a bit more DPS or having some survivability skills + great dps.
There’s also other things to consider. While blue tree has its issues related to pets, Green Tree has stuff like making you stand still and HP thresholds for Gun Damage in a game where you get displaced and healthgated in a single shot: it’s not as reliable as it seems on a first glance, granted they are generally less of a problem than pet stupidity depending on scenario.
The extra gun damage accessible to Red/Blue builds (especially Gamma) also means that the Spiderant Scorcher grows in value by a good amount.
12 Likes
There are already atleast 2 ways to make a great horned skag + Fadeaway build, they don’t need two capstones.
Some of Blue trees best interactions are in the second fourth and fifth tier. He Bites and Frenzy do amazing things together. Who rescued Who is one of FL4Ks more consistent Pet survival skills when paired with All my BFFs. Once you get past tier 3 he gets a ton of upfront power with no conditions. Yes the Capstone kinda blows but the rest of the tree is just fine if a bit inconsistent with how pet damage works.
3 Likes
I wish the pets abilities where more of a deciding factor. As it stand there is more focus on what stats the pet gives you instead of what the pet dose. It also make the basic pets pointless once you have one unlocked. Why put so much work in to making pet abilities for 3 pets a player will never use once past level 15?
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I do tend to agree with the OP. Now that we will be able to get two capstones with the (likely) coming level cap raise, it seems like the most powerful builds from a damage output perspective will come from combining Megavore and The Power Inside.
I don’t think that this path is the foregone conclusion, because I definitely could see the potential for a new class mod centered around the blue tree that provided a nice passive such as, perhaps, allowing attack command be used more frequently and making each pet attack act as a debuff to enemies instead of just dealing damage exclusively.
But I do think that most players will opt for the Megavore/TPI combo when the new level cap comes.
EDIT: The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of Fl4k’s pets’ attacks acting as a debuff on enemies. So for each enemy damaged by the pet, the enemy takes 50% more damage or something like that. I mean, if they are essentially just going to make the pets a utility, then let’s just make them a utility in the same way that Axton’s turret was a utility. Use the pet for debuff and distraction!
Anyone else ever thought about this?
5 Likes
By skill trees alone, Green-Red definitely has the best dps. But apart from TPI, Green tree suffers from basically only having gun/weapon damage, which is a very common bonus on COMs and anointments, diminishing their value. Blue tree boosts overall damage, elemental damage (indirectly from Yawp) etc, which tend to stack better with anointments.
I think Fade Away builds will mostly revolve around Red-Green because they now have TPI for DPS and Megavore for cooldown management. But Rakk builds should still see a relatively even split.
3 Likes
@darreltan2004 I do see what you are saying, but the problem with this specific level cap raise (taking us from 1 capstone to 2) is that players presently using Rakk builds with Megavore now will be much less incentivized to play the Rakk build with the blue tree. The damage increase from adding TPI to a Rakk build will just be so significant that it will be hard to pass up in builds. The damage boost is just too big.
I always feel like my Rakk build should be stronger and more survivable when I go down the blue tree instead of going down the green tree (my normal build is Red/Green with Megavore), but for me, in practice, the blue tree just ends up performing so … underwhelmingly.
2 Likes
It doesn’t seem like it would be that much extra damage though. TPI only adds 25% bonus damage most of the time, and that + hidden machine ( which barely price with Fade Away and almist never with Rakk) are the only bonus damage buffs in the tree.
TPI is a 50% bonus damage if Fl4k is at full health, and with as often as you can cast Rakks and kill enemies to proc shield and health regen, you get the bonus 25/50% damage an awful lot. This is why I believe that TPI is such a big addition to a Rakk build that also uses Megavore. Not only can you proc your anointments all the time, but TPI becomes kind of like another anointment (i.e., proc’ed by action skill use) that adds 25/50% bonus damage basically all the time in a Rakk build. This is super powerful.
3 Likes
You have to keep in mind TPI is additive to Pack Tactics, Frenzy, Empathic Rage, Interplanetary Stalker, Horned Skag Damage… When all your skills were up while playing with Blue Tree, you were already effectively playing with TPI.
Now it will just be a bit easier to achieve that threshold.
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Rakks and Gitm will get a huge bump from two caps which has me stoked but alot of the builds that get me the most excited over the new levels usually don’t double cap.
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They can hang with Wotan, you just need a friend bot or gammaburst.
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Of course, i simply mean the overall usability and practicality of it: it’s much simpler to just get a cast of TPI, since switching to a Friendbot or Gamma Burst is a DPS loss (no glitches assumed).
Switching to the base Jabber works well for me, he only dies sometimes and if he does you can use the pet revive trick of just swapping to another pet then back to the original. This way you can keep your bossing class mod on.
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I prefer to not have to switch mods or action skills for bosses, I run a friendbot Fadeaway and a friend showed me a moxsy build around a similar concept but no friendbot that should be able to do TTM too.
The buff from the horned skag seems to be on par with using tpi if I’m not mistaken.
3 Likes
Friendbot is a good com, but it’s a decent to moderate DPS loss over a properly rolled Cosmic Stalker/Bounty Hunter. +5 Yawp is closer to a St4ckbot/R4kk P4k/Below 75% DE4DEYE than those other two. But it’s not bad, it’s just that +5 Yawp is actually less meaningful than it looks to be. It also depends on scenario of course: it gives you great starting bonuses to a fight, much like St4ckbot/R4kk P4k/DE4DEYE. And it also has the useful passive too.
Can confirm that the combo capstones of TPI and Megavore is super powerful with a Rakk build.
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