Buffing Zane's Drone and Clone

Borderlands 3 Zane the Operative
#1

I know A LOT of you will disagree with me here but hear me out first. They gave Zane a lot of love I know that and he is actually one of the strongest vault hunters now late game, like he went from absolute garbage to godly. But I still do have a few problem with him and I know they’re working hard to improve these characters so I thought I’d help out.

Drone: I know the Drone is supposed to be a support type ability and it’s supposed to do decent damage as well. The problem is the augments honestly. The cryo augment is definitely amazing already but the other augments is a little meh. The shock augment doesn’t really do a lot of damage to shields and barely recharge yours. The missile barrage is straight up useless and it seemed interesting at first but there’s no cooldown and most of the time it misses and the damage is underwhelming. The radiation augment is ok but I dont really see a difference in the enemies movement speed reduction or Zane’s movement speed increase and fire rate (probably because my fire rate is already too high idk). And I feel like the missile augment should’ve already been on the drone instead of being an augment. Maybe thay augment should be replaced with something like a flamethrower that does incendiary damage to enemies and a high chance to burn? Not at all trying to make his drone OP, just a little more helpful since I know the drone is supposed to be a Support ability with some good damage.

Clone: The clone can be godly with some weapons (Specifically the Lob and the Luck gun) but other weapons are eh. I get that they can’t make the A.I. perfect but maybe buff the clone damage will help. The clone can still die very fast so it should be at least more of a distraction and a very good damage dealer. Buffing the clone damage will make it more useful with more variety of weapons to choose so people don’t have to worry about specific weapons.

The barrier is in a good place right now honestly. But some of the augments doesn’t really work. I was hoping for an ammo regen augment but that’s just my opinion lol.

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#2

I never pick up the missile augment, don’t want to think about aiming that in combat.

I find radiation to be useful. Shock, as you say, not so much.
Zane crits a lot (more than me, embarrassingly) so does decent damage with his stock gun, I don’t use Double Barrel, but I may respec to try it with the Anarchy shotgun to see if Clone stacks damage too.

But in general I treat Clone and Drone like I treated DeathTrap or Wolf and Saint, they exist more to draw aggro away from me than to do damage themselves. But in BL3’s case, they do a decent amount of damage and get kills, even in Mayhem.

Pretty happy with him.
–RoA

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#3

The shock augment is relevant for specific builds because it has built-in shield steal and can help recharge amp shields.
The Clone is alright, I only wish he was a little more competent with recoil management because that greatly reduces his rate of fire with certain weapons. What I will say is that a lot of people seem to sleep on Fractal Frags and how it interacts with the seein’ dead class mod. You can basically use it to keep up your grenade throw anoint indefinitely and cover the entire map in whatever grenade you are using.

#4

Zane is meant to utilize his AS differently than most other VHs, only similar is Moze.

Clone dying too fast? Slap on a Backham or drop it your barrier. Not doing enough damage? Make sure you have BOOM. Enhance. and Double Barrel. There is a clone weapon guide that can help you pick weapons.

I do, and many others agree is that they need their augments changed to match M4 levels, but they clone/drone themselves are in a good spot. There are many posts asking GB to tweak the augments with no avail.

#5

@djmitchell705: what exactly is this “Luck gun”?

#6

I forgot what it is called but it’s the gun where you can randomly amp damage.

#7

My Drone kills things quite frequently on m4. Don’t ask how, cause I don’t know. I run Boomsday and Bad dose, and have trick of the light.

Clone is gonna depend on Donny Brook and Class mod and positioning. Clone performs best when made part of an active game play style, or when given a gun with a goal.

#8

That’s why :slight_smile: (not best dmg, but it is not bad for a pet that can’t be killed)

#9

Lucky 7 from the Handsome Jackpot DLC.
Scraptrap Prime drops them like candy…
Great Jakobs pistol!

#10

Nobody gave zane alot of love they gave him one com

#11

Zane has been AMAZING! I have just hit MAX level for now (57) and have polished off our last Circle of Slaughter. I have ran him with both clone AND drone for the duration of the game at the sacrifice of grenades so I don’t think I have ever once thrown a grenade because of this :rofl:

I am quite surprised that we have managed to MAX our levels before doing ANY of the additional content… considering the additional content upped the MAX level from 50 to 57 and we have touched NONE of it. Not even the handsome jackpot that was released last DECEMBER!!!

And just a side note. The clone is an INCREDIBLE distraction and has gotten me out of PLENTY nasty situations

#12

The biggest thing that annoys me about the clone is that my all time favorite Borderlands character was Axton with the exploding longbow turret, and the Clone is the most half assed version of that you could possibly imagine.

Doppelbanger is just so utterly awful. It destroys the clone, it penalizes you for letting it do some fighting before you blow it, you can’t deploy the clone at range, so the only way to get it close to your enemy is to run up then switch positions… It’s just awful in every conceivable way.

I feel like they basically crammed Roland, Axton, Zer0, Gaige, Wilhelm and Jack into a single character that doesn’t do any of the things it does as well as the characters it was Frankensteined together from, and then gave it only one super powerful class mod that is basically used in every single build.

What I really want to see is some way to make a Doppelbanger build viable, and that means being able to deploy the clone at range, or have it run before it explodes or just something that makes it not a complete waste of your action skill.

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#13

Just make the time it takes to blow him up a tenth of what it is right now. Would be a good start