Thoughts on the Post Mortem Modifier

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 General Discussion
#1

I thought I’d talk a little about the post mortem Mayhem modifier because it’s one of my favourites among the very hard ones.
To quickly summarize, when you kill an enemy there’s a chance for Death to spawn, which is essentially like a Ghost from the bloody harvest, just slower, much more tanky and if it touches you, you will immediately go into Fight for your Life.
Here’s some things I’ve observed:

1: Death will always follow the player who killed the original mob and ignore the others. This means that he will also seek out Zane’s Digi-Clone, however he cannot actually hurt it (I’m really grateful for that because enemies one-shotting your clone is a pain in the ass, looking at you, Agonizer), so he just ends up circling on the spot next to the Clone and eventually despawning. I could imagine that the same thing happens with Fl4k’s pets or auto-bear.

2: I’ve noticed that my Clone completely ignores Death and doesn’t try to attack it.

3: I’m not 100% sure but I have a suspicion that the game doesn’t treat Death as a proper enemy in some regards. You don’t seem to be getting kill skills from destroying him and he doesn’t drop anything or award experience, either.

4: Death sometimes has a tendency to glitch his way through floors or walls which can be extremely annoying, especially in maps with a lot of verticality (I had him pop up below my feet in the Guts of Carnivora several times) because he can occasionally hit you with no chance of seeing him first. On the topic of seeing, I also feel like he needs to be made a little more noticable on darker maps, maybe give him some kind of glowing outline.

5: His hitboxes appear to be a little wonky, sometimes it feels like shots that should hit him straight in the face just don’t do anything. I recommend using a Lob because the orbs are bigger than Death himself, so you are basically guaranteed the hits.

6: Kinda forgot about that one, but it’s pretty specific anyways: The german localisation of the modifier describtion is completely wack. I dunno if the translators weren’t given enough time or if the team isn’t big enough but yeah… I remember seeing some considerable errors in some other modifier describtions as well, those really need another round of going over because there’s stuff in there that should have been caught before approving those translations.

Another quick thing: I really feel like there’s potential for messing around with him a little. For instance, he could have a small chance to drop a Deathless Artifact when destroyed (I mean, honestly, it’s almost too obvious not to use) and I would love for there to be some achievement and reward related to it (i.e. a skull-based skin or head for having cheated Death 100 times).

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#2

IMO it’s meh but mostly because of the bloated health pools, if it weren’t for them I would probably like it too.

2 Likes
#3

That would require Iron bear or pets to actually do damage in higher Mayhem levels.

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#4

They only need to be dealing the killing blow, so it still is gonna happen occasionally.

#5

Honestly, of all the modifiers this one just straight seems like a troll, they took the most hated part of the Halloween event, fed it steroids and dialled it up to 11. I’ve had 3 of them chasing me at once and they take 4-5 full mags with an M10 OPQ to down them. It’s not fun, it adds nothing to the gameplay and it’s a waste of time and breaks up the flow of combat. Same goes for the cryo orbs to a lesser extent but at least you can ignore those up to a point and get on with killing whatever it was you were killing.

M2.0 is even worse than I imagined it would be BL3 has gone from a game that I loved to play to one that causes me to rage quit more times than I’d like to admit, overnight.

7 Likes
#6

I hate these things as they really just disrupt the flow of battle. I enjoy the chaos of M 10, especially when the Cartels drop in, but not when I need to clear out a bullet sponge to get back to work on what I was doing. I also hated the Halloween event, so these things are just a painful reminder of that.

6 Likes
#7

I just ran into my first one, having just tried the modifier. I hate it. It’s somewhere between the cryo balls and the anointed purple orbs of death. At least you seem to be able to deal damage, but after I got it to 50% health, nothing seemed to deal damage to it.

At least the cryo balls can be destroyed with one clip. This modifier is horribly designed, just like the purple balls of death and the Buddy System drones.

I look forward to Mayhem 3.0. Third times a charm, right?

1 Like
#8

I think the fact that Death can go through walls and floors is intended. What I dont like about it is something that a lot of people already said and I completely agree: too much HP.

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#9

Death would be nice if they reduced its hp by 10 time.

2 Likes
#10

If you could kill it easily there would not be much point to it, I d say to make Death despawn a little faster

#11

I think the instant ffyl is a bit over the top. If it would always damage you for 90% of you life (+strip the shield) it would be taken way more by resilient builds. I think every modifier should at least have some kind of advantage, so maybe it can damage other enemies if they get in the way at least, that would become interesting.

#12

This is probably my number one most hated modifier. They have way too much HP (seem to scale with the enemy you killed as well I’ve seen Lvl 58’s after killing mini bosses), and can’t be ignored so they basically take you out of the battle until you’ve dealt with them. It’s just about as ■■■■■■■■ as having an instakill modifier (rogue light) in a game where ■■■■ can take you from full shields and health to FFYL in nanoseconds.

#13

Too many HP is true of all the spawns, drones, and orbs in these modifiers that is bad but as the OP said these are not real enemies, they don’t obey walls, they are not chained by the brainstormer or Redistributor, they do not show on the mini-map. All of those things are annoying on something like the Transport Bridge when I am using a Redistributor or explosions to kill and things die behind me and now Death spawns at super close range with really no warning.

#14

Death does appear on the radar.
Not much help for it’s other problems I know but it does show up on radar…

#15

It’s okay for fun on occasion, but most of the modifiers IMO are like the anointed ( especially militant). They ruin the rhythm of the game. It doesn’t make it difficult, it just wastes time.

I wish we could still make it hard without the goofiness (not to mention lag, frame drop, etc). Ya know, like old Mayhem 4 was.

4 Likes
#16

so much hp, its horrible and makes me rage solo, and nothing tilts me more when its the only thing on the map and im spending like 5 mins with my OPQ emptying clips into it. I JUST SUICIDED CAUSE I KNEW I COULD GET UP FASTER THAN WASTING MY TIME KILLING DEATH lmao

#17

Are you sure your gear is up to snuff? I mean, Death is admittedly kind of nasty, but a Scaled Lob or Kaoson should be able to deal with it within less than a minute without any problems.
It should however be noted that Deaths hitbox is a little wonky. I’ve found that aiming at the teeth usually guarantees that you actually hit it and the bullets don’t just go through.

1 Like
#18

the skulls have way too much hps imo (~5M on M10 i think), I mean sure you can kill it in seconds with a fire sandhawk or x8 fire monarch in bipod mode but with 90% of other weapons it’s just too bullet spongy. My lazy way to cope with it is to roll post mortem with freeze tag, since the latter spawns more often and also chases you, and just run into death and get a second wind off the freeze ball xD

Also I found out that a fire Kaos (not Kaoson, but the Dahl AR) can sometimes 1-shot the skull with its on-kill explosion+hollow point if you get a crit kill, maybe BoTD can do the same but havn’t found one with fire anointment to test it

#19

This.

And this. A thousand times. Applies to all of the hardest modifiers actually.

No FFYL? Is this still BL?

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#20

all the little spawns death, the freeze tag, immunity drones have way way too many HP for what they are. I’m guessing the never spent anytime play testing these dumb things at M10. The freeze tag orbs actually take more clips than the average mob does from my Kaoson.