The hardest playing, smartest, “Look a gift horse in the mouth” community around!

Borderlands 3 Moze the Gunner
#1

Old saying: “Never look a gift horse in the mouth.” Sigh…yet…Here we go again.

For an eternity in this game Moze has not equaled the three other characters. And it has not even been close.

The least played character, with the worst action skill and totally under powered compared to the others…yet it has the most inventive and vibrant community in the game.

We have always swallowed our constraints and turned to brain power and innovation to cover up the obvious weaknesses in the character.

And now, a huge surprise…Gearbox gives us a gift from above. They give us a character that is now on par with the other characters. With an action skill that is fun as hell and totally usable. With a complete alternate play style available. Opens up builds, increases viability and variety. Exactly what Gearbox promised to do to fix the Mayhem 2.0 mess.

And what happens?

I see so many people already complaining that Iron Bear is “broken“ and “too powerful“ And that Gearbox should nerf it. And these people always say “not too much“ and” just enough to get balance”…Whatever the hell that is in a non-PVP game based on a franchise that has always had various amounts of overpowered skills and weapons.

This is not a PVP game and it caters to the casual solo player. “Balance” truly means very little. And oh by the way, the game already gives you the opportunity to create your own “balance“ by mixing equipment and builds…and now Mayhem levels.

I guess what I am driving at is if a player wants increased challenge…they can create it themselves. If another player wants to zip through the game with the absolute OP best everything…they can do that as well. Kind of the perfect situation in a game like Borderlands.

Calls for balance are nothing more than the small 10% of hard-core, elite players demanding that the game be played the way they want it to be played. And they are active and very vocal…even if a small percentage of the overall base.

This is utter nonsense. And before someone accuses me of just being a “casual”…I have played every game in the series extensively with thousands of hours. I participated in the Raid Time Trials in BL2 and still hold a couple spots on the leaderboard. I am about as “hard core” as you can get in this game. And I know about competitive games and competitions. This is just not one of them, and the same rules should never apply.

Borderlands has always been an exceptional game because it has always appealed to a much broader audience.

We finally have Moze back on the right track. Let’s tone it down people …on any calls for “lessening”. Every time the “lessening” happens…people leave in droves and the game suffers dramatically.

You’d think we and GB would learn…

47 Likes
#2

I think alot of Moze players have a strong pride about running the weakest character in the game and squeezing every little last drop of effectiveness they can out of the character.

Now, Iron Bear is Iron God and players feel like it’s “easy mode”. No more sense of pride, no more builds to figure out, etc.

I guess I can see it both ways. I’d be fine with a slight tone down for Iron Bear but I would also be totally happy if IB stayed with its current power.

What I hope doesn’t happen is IB goes back to being a proxy for XYZ annointment because that is just painful.

7 Likes
#3

I’m fine with a perfectly-geared-for Iron Bear being more powerful than a perfectly-geared-up Moze. It’s a five-ton walking death machine, there should be some oomph to it. On foot, you have more mobility and the freedom of weapon changing, while in the mech you have raw power and tankability.

18 Likes
#4

I always thought IB should be equal or stronger than Moze, or else staying inside it would make no sense whatsoever. I think the way it is atm is just perfect, couldn’t be happier with it.

Although I wish AB would let me kill something myself instead of spamming those 16m nukes non-stop and stealing my glory.

5 Likes
#5

lol tell that to eevryone who will be kicking you out of their game.

people love to think this game is somehow exclusively solo. but i personally think about one thing as essential to balance, if i joined someone’s game would they like to play with me? and many answers return with no. for example an amara with ase ricochets and ttb current ib current clone current ase fl4k. there are not many players here playing to choose some inferior options and then everyone is surprised how everyone is runing the latest meta setup.

if i am runing my game open lobby i wuld have to kick out quite a lot of players to maintain fun.

2 Likes
#6

It’s a funny thing how this has changed so quickly.

Last week, if you wanted to play an action skill build and have it be effective on high level, a fair number of players would tell you “that’s what mayhem levels are for. If you wan to do an AS build, lower the mayhem”. Now it’s the opposite. If you don’t want your AS to murder everything, turn down the mayhem.

It’s an inherent flaw of the whole game mode. The scaling is bloated, and because that bloating is way beyond what it would ever be naturally (unlike OP levels, which just continued scaling most of the game while your character remained stagnant) GB has to set the scaling up manually. Which means that nothing is viable unless they design it that way, and if something is too bad or too good, you have to hope they fix it in a way that doesn’t ruin anything.

Quite frankly, any talk specifically about nerfing when we still don’t know how everything is scaling is far too premature. We found a host of unexpected interactions with FL4K that really beefed up some pets over others. I’m pretty sure people are doing the same digging for Clone and Bear. The priority should be to nix any unexpected interactions that are making the abilities scale higher than intended, then take a look at the power level of action skills to see if further adjustment is needed.

Keep in mind though, GB is the only one who can set the power scaling of action skills. And there will be a point where they are going to feel it’s in a good place. Whether the community feels the same way at that point is what remains to be seen, but I will suggest that everyone be CRYSTAL clear when discussing this issue what power-level you expect the skills to have.

Is that really an issue though?

You have a far better idea of what you are willing to tolerate in your coop game than GB does. I’m glad you’re willing to take the initiative and actually just set guidelines for your own game (so many people seem to be totally unwilling to do so), but I don’t feel comfortable with the thought of GB balancing around coop.

3 Likes
#7

Truth is, IB needs to be stronger than Moze. It replaces her, and would make no sense calling for it to be weaker.
It is like the Power Rangers calling the Zords when they could kill the giant monster without them. When the monster Power up, they Power up too.

But what @boombumr said is pretty much true. When the AS werent strong, the problem was that Mayhem was not designed for them. Now seems like the table has turned and AS are too OP for Mayhem scaling.

To fix Auto Bear problem, Gearbox would have to fix Zane and Amara too. Community wants it? I dont think so.

8 Likes
#8

@johnrr6, perhaps nerf is the wrong concept — I like what GBX has done with Mayhem damage scaling, but I would like them to take another balancing pass at individual hardpoints. The Salamander, V-22, Bear Fists and even some of the weird augments (homing rockets; seriously, try them) are totally usable now, but there is still no reason to use them over the S-tier hardpoints.

2 Likes
#9

People having open lobbies and then kicking people who join said lobbies out, are why some of us don’t even bother with multiplayer.

10 Likes
#10

I would give “some” IB damage for fixing our other issues. IB is cool and all, but him and OP DLC3 weapons are the only things keeping us on par with other VHs. When the weapon nerf comes (we all know Flipper will get shafted), and IB scaling gets cut, what will be left? Pre-buffed Moze with clunky play and no room for experiment.

We still have broken capstones, we still have anti-synergy talents, we still have subpar healing, we still have the worst mobility. And we STILL have suiciding splash.

Just fix this sh.t Gearbox please. And then we can talk about “tuning” Iron Bear.

6 Likes
#11

THIS. I’m not proud of playing the “weakest vault hunter”. I am fine with an OP IB with the right build, no questions asked.
The actual problem is that an un-perfectly geared IB is already far more powerful than a lot of perfectly-geared-up Mozes. Of course you should be powerful in a f*****ng mech, but i think something is wrong when i can easily do any takedown on M10 without any particular build or gear.
“But OP things were always a thing in Borderlands”
And that’s part of the few things i don’t really like in Borderlands. Can Fl4k, Zane or Amara be as OP ? Of course they can, but at least, they need specific skills, builds, legendary weapons, anointments… Moze doesn’t even really need that anymore imo. People are talking about Mindsweeper Iron Bear, but without even that, you can faceroll almost anything with it.
They added “Action Skill damage” rolls on class mods, but do IB builds need that ? Even Raging Bear or class mods about IB aren’t necessary.

Then again, that’s only my personal view, i know that a lot of people will disagree, i would understand.
IMO, the two main problems are : Mayhem 2.0, and the fact that IB is flawed by design, as we can’t equip him with better gear that we loot as we do with Moze.

#12

But other vault hunters don’t have to put gear on to use their action skills effectively, they can spam them and put little investment into them. They still have utility and usage. Now take that away from moze, you have a useless action skill, or an Action skill spammer which literally no one likes doing with iron bear. “I’m going to get in this big giant mech and get out because I’m more effective this way.” I kind of see where you are coming from, but I’ve only seen IB really excel at mobbing without any gear investment, still invested hardpoint damage. For bosses, she does well, not that great, but it’s good, (let’s not talk about raging bear or minesweeper yet). With all the hardpoint damage in the world, the damage is genuinely just enjoyable. I guess you can argue a problem to where why not invest in iron bear skills since the red tree on her is useless, what else is there to do??

#13

I’m not unless you want to make the “perfectly-geared-up Moze” as strong as how the other VHs with their AS active are.

2 Likes
#14

What is a perfectly-geared IB or perfectly-geared Moze? I keep hearing this kind of thing but I dont really know what it is about.
The best COM, annoints and passive rolls affects both Moze and Iron Bear so what should we look for? Iron Bear should only be good if I roll Skill Damage in both COM and Arctifact? Mind Sweeper and Blast Master should only affects Moze so I need to choose an Iron Bear focused COM and not have a hybrid playstyle? :thinking:

Man, this is really non sense. Iron Bear is in a good shape now, as everyone is speccing its skills and using things that affects it.

3 Likes
#15

May I point you to another PvE game that has not nerfed anything since launch… Diablo 3. If you have played D3 in the last 6 months you would know the effect of never nerfing anything. You end up with damage number in the hundreds of trillions, boss health of hundreds of quintillions and weapon multiplyers of anything up to 75,000%. I’m not saying I want IB to be nerfed cause I like him in his current state but having this blanked attitude to nerfs might be fun in the short term but can make things much worse in the long term.

1 Like
#16

Diablo nerfs all the time. Mostly in PTR (so I guess one could say it doesn’t count), but they frequently pull massive nerfs that destroy perspective play styles (Static Charge, Morticks Bracer, recently MOJ with Phantasms, etc…).

1 Like
#17

Excuse me, my Critical Mass Wizard would like to have a word.

2 Likes
#18

I don’t know where the heck this myth that diablo never nerfs things came from. They typically nerf something in a major way almost every season. They buff a lot more than they nerf, but they also nerf a lot.

4 Likes
#19

Please don’t change Moze, I agree with everything this guy said speaking to you gearbox, i am also a longtime fan, buying every DLC and every game the franchise, I run multiple characters just like I have and every other Borderlands game and Moze was my first character in BL3 and has been my main for last couple months, please do not change or nerf her

1 Like
#20

Yeah fix the actual broken things before anymore tooling with charectors. I run Zane Moze and Amara, and this is the funnest I’ve had with Moze in a long time and she was my first character. If you want to mess with somebody messed with Zane he still feels shaky and skills don’t synergize correctly and don’t get me started on his greentrees Capstone