I hear Gearbox is working on some moze buffs so I thought now is the best time to get my ideas out there.
This is the first part of a 3 part series/Open letter to developers on how to fix the more glaring issues with the current vault hunters.
(Links for current skill trees: http://bl3skills.com/gunner
http://bl3skills.com/siren http://bl3skills.com/beastmaster
http://bl3skills.com/operative)
Iron Bear Specific:
Remove the delay for ejecting from iron bear, so it’s just a button tap
Give iron bear some anoints, identical to the “on exiting iron bear anoints” but work while iron bear is active or maybe “on entering iron bear” but last longer than the on exit anoints excepting the duration of the splash damage anoint.
Allow for summoning of Auto-Bear
After you purchase auto-bear allow holding the action skill button to allow auto-bear to be summoned/digistruct in front of moze. This would bypass the normal deploying animation and forfeight the benefits of “on exiting iron bear anoints”.
[Standing behind auto-bear should help block some shots. (idk if it does already)]
But if they just tap the button iron bear will be used as normal with auto-bear activating on exit like usual.
To make this more useful give auto-bear a surrounding bubble shield from security bear when summoned.
That would function like zane’s barrier blocking shots while moze stands within the shield
so she can have time to regain her shield.
*enemies should still be able to attack her if they go inside the shield
Moze Specific:
Change vampyre to let moze heal when doing splash damage. Instead of just grenades.
So splash damage & grenades will heal her.
Change Torgue Cross-Promotion, to add splash damage to every shot at some percentage of damage dealt at a fixed radius.
If the weapon already has splash damage this skill should only increase the splash damage but let it use its own radius. (until it’s doubled of course)
it should also provide overall splash damage reduction.
The Splash damage added to splash weapons and the splash damage reduction, should follow the same percentages as Amara’s Arms Deal.
Maxing at +20% damage and 40% splash damage reduction.
Change Rushin’ Offensive so moze can aim, and throw grenades while she’s sprinting as well.
(and please see about adjusting the sprint mechanic so we have more range of motion without canceling the speed increase. i.e we can strafe and move backwards while still sprinting with all characters.)
Change Force Feedback to work on critical hits instead of critical kills.
On m4 no one goes down in seconds even with constant crits. In a vacuum if I’m not taking damage in the time it takes to kill 1 badass enemy my shield most likely could have recharged by itself, if not 3 times over.
So, to give this skill some practical purpose it should work on critical hits. For those running a deathless build this will essentially become a lifeline, a type of health regen that only kicks in when you get critical hits.
*edit Also fix pull the holy pin and vampyre so both skills can be triggered with artillery grenades not just the splash damage when a grenade explodes.
As this severely limits the variety of grenade moze can use.
Fix fire in the skag den, so it can account for critical hits.
Change Selfless Vengeance so it actually works on total damage dealt, meaning the percentage would include all anoint damage in the calculation of total damage.
I’m saying to give this skill a separate formula for calculating total damage, which includes all anoints in the formula, then have the skill operate off of that value. This way the other elements are included but you don’t have a damage loop created by elemental damage.
To make it clear I’m saying instead of having the Selfless Vengeance percentage within the normal damage formula take it out.
Have your normal equation calculate all the gun damage buffs elemental buffs bonus elemental damage from anoints v1 v2 etc.
Then after that’s done it becomes the variable known as total damage, then the percentage for Selfless Vengeance equation would be multiplied with it.
(Selfless vengeance + Stoke the embers) and that would do it.
ex. 5k total damage 15% of that added on in fire damage than have 30% of that additional fire damage boosted to an effective almost 20% of damage dealt in fire damage. which would give results of…
5k total damage and approx 1k in additional incendiary damage from Selfless Vengenace
If it needs balancing just remove the team benefit from the skill, moze is the one who needs more damage.
But I believe having the skill operate in that way, which it makes sense for it to, would make it stronger, but not obscenely so. Thus keeping the team component shouldn’t be unbalancing.
This will allow moze to have good lifesteal, while making all weapons viable for her instead of everyone gravitating to weapons with splash damage for the needed damage.
Plus giving some nice and much needed survivability.
While also providing a nice needed damage and buff exclusive to moze.
Her red capstone “ tenacious defense ” would work for all builds if the skill gave her immediate immunity on shield break allowing the skill to actually kick in, instead of triggering ffyl because you only have 1hp.
Finally exchange the position of Vampyr and Deadlines in the skill tree.
Having life-steal early in the tree is important to ensuring it’s accessible to everyone that plays her without having to sacrifice build variety.
Plus most other characters have at least one form of regen or life-steal built into each of their 3 skill trees. Several of which are on the first level of a tree.
Also, stainless Steel bear already does accomplish the job of Deadlines well early on.
Moving the skill to higher levels will allow players to make more use of it.
As by then they’ll be able to access the upper-tier augments and skills that make ironbear so deadly.