"I would be okay with IB buff if more gear is required" this argument doesn't hold up

Borderlands 3 Moze the Gunner
#1

I see this argument on here a lot so I’m just going to point out what I see as unequal treatment.

“I’m okay with Iron Bear being powerful, but it should not be powerful without gear investment.”

No other VH invests gear into their action skill to make it strong. The other vault hunter action skills are strong because they have anointments that increase their damage by a lot, and the action skills are quick. They also have skills to use it a lot during a fight, Amara sometimes doesn’t even use hers at the enemy sometimes. The big boy action skills on them (Fade away, phaselock, clone after patch, barrier) had utility that made them stronger without really having to look at their gear that specifically catered to that action skill. Zane I’ll give an exception too because he needs seein dead to be effective damage wise, but barrier still tanked for him.

Now look at Moze’s action skill without gear invested into it before patch.

-agro for 15 seconds, more if you want to do the COM swap trick and keep damage, but no other VH has to do that
-target softening, but the other VH gain access to better damage than target softening when they use their action skill
-ASE but clunkier and less spammy
-an extra health bar, but she really does not need it unless you’re shield of retribution moze which is bad btw
-infinite ammo afterwards

Nothing here about actually piloting Iron Bear, the ASE which every VH does but they can spam it more than Moze (IB has long cooldown and a clunky animation if all you want to do is get out immediately). I think the action skill specific anoints are actually okay on moze, but aside from that, nothing that boosts her damage after ending her action skill. Some target softening, 15% damage, not bad, not good, and the other VH do more with their action skill. After that, nothing that stands out. There is no outstanding action skill specific anoint that the other VHs can’t match.

I know there are useless action skills on the other characters (haven’t heard anything about phasecast yet or gamma burst) but at least you had the option of picking the best Action skill. Moze had IB with different weapons and could only spam backburner, plaguebearer, sandhawk which everyone can do btw, just not as much as moze.

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#2

Also no other characters action skill becomes the character

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#3

You can’t compare IB to the other action skills…

I might be wrong but don’t 2/3 Zane action skills rely on either your current shield/gun?

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#4

point is
sure, it is unfair
“all the other characters just get a bonus with their AS and moze basically gets replaced
and ON TOP of that she also should have good gear to be strong in that form?”
BUT
this is a looter game
what is there left to play for when you can enter mayhem 10 with a naked level 60 character and just obliterate everything?

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#5

Why? So their action skills have utility and damage boosting potential and possibly damage itself (ties that bind), what does Moze have in its base form? Damage. That’s her action skill, designed for damage, like Gamma Burst and Phasecast, phaseslam, but she has a long cooldown and a long animation compared to them so ASEs are clunky. They get a payoff for using bad action skills with a shorter coolodwn because ASEs exist. Iron Bear had no place in this game to begin with unless it was gear dependent, but they made a poor design choice, and they may learn from it, who knows.

Correct, but you do not need to invest in them to get some kind of benefit. Right now clone scales and we’re in the experimental phase so more guns may turn out to work, and nobody invests in green tree. Shorter cooldown for clone and barrier, barrier and clone provide protection without taking your gear away, so yes they are sort of gear dependent for the capstones, but your damage is boosted while those are active anyway, Iron bear didn’t have significant damage no matter what you did before.

#6

Yeah once you have a minesweeper or raging bear, moze build is done which isn’t how it should be, but that’s what you get for having an action skill focused on damage only. Poor design choice, but ambitious imo

Solutions:
-Rework Iron Bear to be able to abuse ASE or get better anoints after exiting Iron Bear (rework not happening, better anoints maybe but it feels a little artificial because there is still the problem of iron bear not doing anything just getting ASEs)

-nerf iron bear now, make anoints directly effect Iron bear and add something to the skills that make Iron Bear more gear dependent. (weapon equipped gives some kind of bonus???) Possibly also give an additional bonus anoint to moze after exiting iron bear but that might be pushing it. Eventually Iron Bear will reach the damage output of the one we have now(This could work)

#7

Well currently. A million HP. A 1 point investment that makes the action skill stick around for 15 more seconds and continue to deal free damage. And the anoints Moze benefits best from are basically permanent so don’t act like she doesn’t get anything from them. 300%, 150%, CH, Next 2 mags (small investment to make perm) etc etc. It does nothing for the discussion to continuously understate everything. As far as the long cooldown, that’s very easy to overcome and make it a very low cooldown as well. Iron Bear was in a perfect spot before 2.0 dropped at the end of MH4 after getting the recent buffs. When 2.0 dropped yeah it became ■■■■, but now it’s just stupidly broken.

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#8

I was talking with respect to pre-patch, but I’ll play along. These anoints could be effective with everyone, and nobody really outclassed each other by much using each of these anoints. Theoretically those anoints are pretty much permanent on everyone. Everybody used CH monarch. Next two magazines: by the time someone blows by two mags, they usually have their action skill back, it’s not that far away from permanent. How about the ASEs on the grenade and shield?

Oh but we can do this

So now we can get in Iron bear fast, wait a couple seconds to get in, and take another couple seconds to get out. Nice. Also we get a 15% damage boost from target softening and… that’s it. Flak has crits, amara has indiscriminate with ties that bind, and they don’t have to wait that long zane actually isn’t strong(topic for another day). And those action skills are faster in general, and we can not consistently reach their cooldown rate with IB, their cooldown is just that much lower.

I never said the anoints didn’t do anything for Moze; it could be said in my original post that i was mainly pointing out that they’re not losing out on any action because they don’t really have to go through some clunky animation, and they can spam more efficiently. (Although she is losing out on a lot of time trying to get an ASE from shield and nade, not guns assuming we have the 'exclusive" permanent anoints on her guns)

I didn’t understate anything. Pre-patch moze was get in Iron Bear and benefit from the two magazine anoint, and never get in again unless you needed extra damage from a different splash anoint on weapon + shield + grenade anoint. Looking through my original post, I literally said everyone uses ASE, Moze was just clunkier, so not sure where you got me understating Moze. I guess me stating Moze’s action skill is just damage and not talking about the 1 mil hp was me understating, I was really referring to my list in the original post about what IB did pre-patch.

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#9

This is bullocks.

You think Rakk Attack does damage without a fully dedicated build, including anointments? Or Phasespellls?

Double Barrel literally gives your weapon to the clone, how is that not gear investment?

Gamma Burst has no gear to improve the pet damage at the least, and without anointments the gun damage is pitiful. The only reason to ever even run a Gamma build is with the Red Fang.

The hyperbole in the above quote is kind of astounding. Pre-mayhem 2.0, the gear investment you needed to make IB deal good damage was the same you needed for every other action skill: splash COM and artifact, good class mod (of which there were several for IB), and splash anointments. If you were running phasespells, rakk, or pets, you were building the exact same way. Heck ,to get Rakk dealing damage at M10 you still need to build that way! So what is the issue with needing the same level o investment you needed before to do way higher damage?

You use ASEs on characters that work with them, and don’t with those that don’t. Gamma FL4K’s don’t run around spamming ASE, they run uRad same as Moze. Synergy with ASE shouldn’t determine the balancing for anything.

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#10

AKA fadeaway, phasecast, investing a gun with the potential to actually do something post-patch, great everyone uses guns, and you’re most likely going to be using a good gun as well so you’re not sacrificing anything.

Put damage aside for a moment, if we don’t invest into iron bear during this Mayhem 4 phase, we have a clunky, useless action skill that isn’t smooth at all with combat and it was much stronger to just get out right away or just use anoints that don’t rely on AS. Like every Moze player, I am opposed to this type of gameplay. I can see where you’re coming from. Let’s say red tree becomes good and I go red tree, green tree. What’s the point of using that action skill if I am stronger outside of it and I just get out right away doing nothing? Yeah you have useless action skills on Flak and Amara, but at least they’re fast cast, not clunky, and they do at least something with their augments, all Moze’s augments are damage based. They also have the option of using the actual best action skill too, there is no best moze action skill and no augment that really helps out. Hell, Flak’s pet passives like 5% damage, 5% fire rate are probably better than Moze’s IB helping out with no investment.

TLDR; if we don’t invest into Iron Bear Mayhem 4, we have a clunky mess that does nothing, taking you out of the action with little use besides ASE, others have useful augments for bad action skills, these bad action skills aren’t clunky.

Fair enough. How about utility of an action skill? If IB doesn’t do damage, what does IB do by itself, 0 gear investment?COM swap trick? Kind of an exploit don’t you think? Rakk attack can freeze or give health back, phasecast can give health back or phaselock enemies, disrupt them which is utility. At this point, you’d probably argue that IB isn’t comparable to other action skills like the other guy did. It’s not like Moze is trading huge power for a useless action skill lategame, her power is comparable to the other vault hunters, not better.

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#11

I don’t think that is too bad.

Let me use FL4K as an example: outside of investment in the master skill tree, pets are pretty damn worthless. Their passive bonuses are tiny, they have (had I suppose) survival issues, and their already paltry damage was worse. You could get use out of them by speccing into pet revive and FA taunt, but if you were running Rakk with Green tree the pet was terrible.

I don’t see an issue with that. Build differentiation and all that. If I choose to spec into my pet it will be better, but if I spec towards making FL4K a glass cannon then my pet will be relegated purely to utility functions. Moze and IB are more intertwined than any of the other VH are to their action skills, so I think you’d really have to try to conceive of a build where you didn’t have any investment at all.

I-frames and an extra million health ain’t too bad. More useful than Gamma and Rakk without any gear.

With a ton of cryo efficiency and Headcount actually working so we can use Flock n Load, sure. Most of the time, it’s a mild slow and a clunky heal. Fairly similar to

No, quite the opposite. It’s extremely comparable, which is why I find the comparisons you make to other action skills a bit misleading. Yes, IB replaces Moze and should definitely have enough power to compensate for that. My only issue here is the assertion that other VHs don’t need to gear for their action skills so IB shouldn’t.

Any action skill in this game that doesn’t just buff your guns in some way is very weak and requires tons of gearing and scaling to be viable. Not all of them to the same degree, and the persistent summons like Clone, bear, and pets certainly fare better than one off attacks like phasespells and Rakk. However, you still need Double Barrel for the clone to do real damage, and specific weapons for him so his AI won’t break. There still isn’t really anyway to increase the damage Gamma Burst does, and for pets in general you still need absolutely massive amounts of investment in terms of stats rolls, anointments, and skill points. It’s great that IB is getting time in the sun, but the argument this post is built on rests on a flawed premise. No damage based action skill in this game has ever not needed investment to shine.

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#12

i really think that because of that fact that with moze you are playing either or and not the VH and their action skill together, you should be able to invest into IB more
the AS damage on coms is a start
200% damage while AS is active should be able to use in IB but all anointments should be way weaker so they dont make or destroy a build like they do currently
then skills like stainless steel bear, specialist bear, etc. should probably be more impactful
i dont know
there should be a difference between bear pilot and gunner

#13

But the “you still need to gear the other VHs up” is still a rather empty argument to make. How long does it take to catch up to “IB base”? Exactly, that time frame is completely neglectable compared to the overall playtime an even mildly invested player usually has and only really applies to new players anyway. Definitely nothing that warrants a discrepancy in power.

Which depending on the viewpoint might also be an empty argument for many people. If someone comes from TPS and expects AS / pets to be more like the Digi-Jacks in terms of power then “No damage based action skill in this game has ever not needed investment to shine.” by itself might have been seen as an issue which for Moze / Zane players finally got fixed with the last update.

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#14

From my POV, it seems the gameplay for the other vault hunters are a lot smoother despite having weak action skills pre-patch. You have some feeling of power getting into IB, go through this decently long animation relative to the other vault hunters, and then you get out immediately. WTF? This is what happened before patch, Flak gets his pets passively, no time wasted out of combat, and you can argue your pets are an extra health bar as well drawing any kind of agro.

There’s the underlying issue Moze that you’re not seeing, perhaps you have the patience and temperament to go into Iron Bear and get out and be fine that it’s too weak to be used at all. You’ll still use Rakk attack or gamma burst even though it’s too weak because the anoints and it doesn’t hurt to do so, you’ll still have your pets active because why not, it doesn’t take away anything. Oh but Moze has a second health bar, she can just wait in IB because of that hundreds thousand health (not a mill, needs more gear investment) so we get a turtle action skill where you tickle your enemies or b-hop away to strategically place yourself in this big giant mech.

To summarize:
A 0 investment IB without the damage we have now, is a turtle action skill, that takes you out of combat way longer than the other vault hunters to run away. This is not more useful than rakk or gamma burst. IB doesn’t get a million health without a 50% hp shield and you don’t have to go stainless steel bear anymore btw(doesn’t affect short fuze). If you compare pre-patch IB to your gamma burst or rakk attack 0 investment, who wins? surely not the turtle unless you’re that fine with the time you miss out in combat.

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#15

I’ll come back this later, gotta dip at present.

You’ve never dealt with pets then :rofl:. Any aggro draw is entirely dependent on the Red Fang class mod or an augment. That is not native to the pets at all. And Lick the wounds is a skill you have spec for, not a native ability of pets.

IB by a country mile! No question. Gamma with no gear is one of the worst action skills in the game with drone, and Rakk with no ASE to proc are abysmal as well.

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#16

This is what I’ve been saying from the start, Moze always felt out of place to me due to IB.

There is no gear to farm for IB except class mods, there is no integration with the gun play element of the rest of the game. Anointments are only procced when getting out of IB, which right now can can basically go on indefinitely lol

#17

Fair enough, my flak is only level 50. His pets are still passive, and doesn’t waste time.

Opened my eyes a bit and I can see why IB may be better, but maybe that was the wrong question to ask actually. I stepped away from my arugment’s roots there, maybe this will get my point across, does gamma burst or rakk attack take Flak out of combat? Was summoning iron bear for auto bear worth it? More worth if we had our respective anoints? Are your guns taken away? What I’m trying to say is having your character stay in combat is actually the best utility ever :sweat_smile:

#18

I originally wanted to play moze bc of IB, then stopped pre-dlc 2 to make a zane. Glad to be able to level her to 60 and play with the mech suit I originally wanted to and actually be viable in bossing, not just a panic button.

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#19

Not really, since you needed a dank-ass roid shield for the Jacks to really bring the hurt. Without it they were good enough to bring some hurt, but the difference between a fully invested Jack and a 90% invested Jack was millions of damage.

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#20

The same thing also applies to IB, one with full investment is significantly stronger than just the base. Here is an example, this is how much an uninvested HDP does vs. flesh enemies at level 60:

That’s hardly anything to write home about especially given the horrendous fuel consumption and long CD IB has without investment.

But if I spec for him this number is ofc significantly higher (as it should be).