Is it me, or do the Mayhem 10 weapons feel like a joke? I just got back into Borderlands 3 now that a bunch of content has been added and me and my friend have grinded up to Mayhem level 10. While we are having a decent enough time farming the legendaries we want, they seem to do nothing for us. No matter what weapon i use i cant deal any damage.
I’m playing as a Level 60 Zane with Mayhem 10 gear such as the Lob, Sandhawk, Anarchy, Lucian’s Call, etc and i’m not dealing much of anything. Most shots deal about 5-6k damage. Sometimes i’ll get a crit or if i’m just stacking multiple damage bonuses i’ll get 20k. Rarely 50k, but there’s barely a shift in the enemy’s health bar.
However, the moment i pop out my clone with Double Barrel and he has the Lob or Sandhawk, it’s dealing upwards of 500-850k with an occasional 1M in damage numbers and can absolutely melt anything it looks at. Why am i not able to replicate this damage? Why do i have to rely on my action skills to get any kills rather than my own ability to shoot?
Please don’t take this to be condescending. But, on highest difficulty level you will need to run optimized style builds, weapons and anointments.
Yes, the clone and many other action skills got massive damage boosts. Before this they were almost useless except for activating ASE anoints.
With Zane, make sure you are optimizing, get a good theme for your build, get the drone anoints with plus 150% or whichever you wish to work with. Use Seein dead mod and most often a pearl artifact.
Get your weapons that work with Zane’s strengths. Redistributor, lightshow, flipper etc. If you want to use an Anarchy, make sure you pre stack it.
You can boost your damage by an easy 20 times just using Seein Dead and moving while shooting with the right builds.
Make sure you are running the right modifiers.
There are many good builds out there with streamers that can give you some good themes to work with.
Again, I can’t stress it enough, on max difficulty you are going to have to optimize to be effective. There are several paths to take and hopefully you will find one that fits your style and you have fun with.
I know these are just generalities but hope some of it helps you out.
I did my best to optimize and im still doing nothing. I don’t have a Seein’ Dead class mod because i thought it was useless at first. I don’t remember what it does, but im pretty sure i had a good reason not to use it. Was it the one that boosts your Kill Skills? Because i don’t run a Kill Skill Zane. I use mostly the skills from the Clone and Barrier tree. The only stuff i get from the SNTNL tree was the increased gun speed while moving. Thats it.
This may be part of your issue right here. Seein’ Dead is pretty much what makes Zane function at higher difficulties sadly. It sucks that you’re shoehorned into using it to make Zane functional, but it doesn’t suck as much as every other class mod he has - those suck way more.
If you’re spec’d into his red tree, both Synchronicity and Donnybrook are there, and will be activated by Seein’ Dead at basically all times, providing you a huge damage boost. There is a lot of damage in the Drone tree, even if you’re not using the Drone, so you’ll have to accept that you’re making a damage sacrifice if you’re not going down into that tree.
Zane’s kill skills are where a majority of his damage comes from, and Seein’ Dead ensures that they’re activated constantly, even when you’re not making kills. This is why it’s so powerful.
You can obviously play however you want, and if I had time I’m sure I could come up with a working Seein’ Dead build for you using your preferred skill trees. But if you’re looking to play on M10, I mean… it’s the hardest difficulty in the game. If you’re not going to build in a way to maximize damage, you unfortunately can’t expect to be performing well there.
Zane needs alot of crutches to be able to do damage.
My current Drone Clone Zane has a total of +9 in Donnybrook, 5 from my points and 4 from my Seein Dead Mod.
I had tried building around the Conductor mod from DLC2, but he just could not get the damage output. Put on Seein Dead and now he can.
He is mostly blue and red tree.
Just because your weapons and gear are M10 doesn’t mean they are stronger. What i mean is you can get a sandhawk on m8 and it can have the same stats as a M10. M10 just increases the odds of top quality loot drops not power. I have a M7 kaosan ( kaoson, kaosin??? ) that probably a perfect parts roll and i have yet to find another one better than it on M10 or otherwise.
Clone and drone is a lot more viable imo. Kill skills are activated on shot as opposed to actual kills so they’re always active. You’ll be running around at super sonic speed and destroying everything if you go seein’ dead with blue and red tree.
That’s why i think it’s underwhelming. Why am i being forced to use one specific class mod just to be able to actually kill things? Thats nonsense. I shouldn’t have to rely on my Clone to deal any ■■■■■■■ damage because i chose not to use some broken class mod?
Back in BL2 the OP levels increased the strength of your guns by the OP level which made sense. In here, getting Mayhem 10 weapons feels like they’re not much stronger. My friend even noticed it when i gave him 2 Mayhem 10 Level 60 Storms and he said his Mayhem 4 Storm literally did twice the damage of both Mayhem 10s. Like, what? That’s stupid.
No one is really saying it’s a great thing that zane only works with seeing dead its more just a deflated statement it is a problem we all know it but we all have no confidence in gearbox to properly fix the issue as they have shown thru actions in the past that they can’t
This is why people are now complaining the games too easy after months of people saying the games too hard.
M10 is top tier you cant just run round with anything and expect it to go down well. It’s designed to take time to work up to and having the right gear is paramount to that. Don’t take this the wrong way but just saying “I’ve got a sandhawk what gives” is the reason you’re struggling.
If you’re struggling with a build there’s loads of videos on YouTube. Take a look at thiccfila. He’s got a couple of cool builds up that really work. One that you can swap action skills on the fly. A drone and clone seein dead (probably the strongest build for Zane at the moment) or he’s just put another build up this week without using seein dead.
You’re gonna need good annoints on the weapons (the drone cryo is a good one for Zane) or ase with dopplebanger I like to use as well but maybe not as much now the clone is so strong.
You’re gonna need the right points in the skill trees
You’re gonna need the right weapons, shield, classmod and artifact. They should all work together, that’s the whole point of the game.
Do you think im stupid or something? I know how this works. I’ve been playing RPGs for like my whole life. Min-Maxing and optimizing builds is essential in like… any one of them. I spec’d my Zane out for maximum damage and some bit of tankiness so i dont die so easily.
Instead, i apparently have to for-go the bulk in order to actually do any damage? That just doesnt sound right.
Also, my Sandhawk is Radiation and has the Anointed - “When you swap places with your clone, your weapon deals 150% more damage for a short time.” Pretty sure thats a good one to me, and it still cant kill. I found myself reverting back to normal non-mayhem mode just to have any fun.
Even if i do build it perfectly, i still have to rely on the clone far more than i would like to. It’s nonsense. Only the Clone or Drone kills at Mayhem 10 and thats not how it should be.