Reworking Zane’s class mods seems like something the community universally agrees needs changing so I figured I’d put some of my own ideas out there. Feel free to give any suggestions you have.
To also preface this, I am also including suggestions I have for changing the Seein’ Dead class mod as it currently, even after the buffs to most of his other class mods, outclasses the others in virtually every way. I believe, as many have suggested before, if the effects of the Seein’ Dead class mod were switched the effects of Seein’ Red skill that all the other class mods would be easier to balance and make effective, but I am making these suggestions under the presumption that this isn’t occurring. The Seein’ Dead class mod will be referenced quite frequently throughout this post as well, so be prepared for that.
Starting in alphabetical order;
- Current Effects: When sliding or airborne, Zane gains 40% weapon damage and 20% damage reduction. When slowed, Zane gains 100% movement speed.
- Current Skills Boosted: Supersonic Man, Violent Speed, Violent Momentum.
The purpose of this class mod in my opinion is to give greater burst damage while sliding, which is useful for bossing and can out perform the Seein’ Dead class mod in that scenario but outside of that, it isn’t very useful and certainly isn’t necessary to even swap to in its current form as the Seein’ Dead still does more than enough damage while sliding thanks to it boosting all kill skills by 25%. I believe the skills this class mod boosts are all good and I wouldn’t suggest switching any of them out. Overall, this classmod is in a better spot than most of Zane’s other class mods.
Two changes I’d make to this class mod would be to first give it the effect of reversing the movement penalty from taking cyro damage and turning it into a movement bonus. This, on top of the already 100% movement speed while slowed, would ensure that your movement bonuses from supersonic man and violent speed would not be negated and to make sure you’re getting the most damage from violent momentum.
The second effect I would add to this class mod would be to give a large bonus damage against frozen enemies, but after the first shot landed they thaw. This effect would give much greater burst damage against tankier mobs and would aid in making this class mod less niche.
Overall, this classmod is in a better spot than most of Zane’s other class mods, but needs some additional effects or changes to be less niche.
- Current Effects: When an enemy is frozen, a random status effect is applied.
- Current Skills Boosted: Trick of the Light, Ready for Action, Synchronicity
In my opinion, this is tied with the Techspert for Zane’s worst class mod. The effect of this class mod is unnoticeable and might as well just be a generic purple class mod. Two skills on this class mod aren’t that useful either, as the bonus cyro damage from Trick of the Light is not going to be active enough to justify boosting it. Synchronicity isn’t great either as the gun damage gained from this is diminished by the large amounts of gun damage you get from Violent Momentum and Donnybrook. Ready for action is the only worthwhile skill here but has no synergy with the other two skills or the effect of the class mod, making it an odd choice to even have on this class mod.
If we’re going to stick with the “Cold Warrior” idea, this class mod should boost at least one of Brain Freeze, Cold Bore, Refreshment, Best Served Cold, Futility Belt, or Stiff Upper Lip. I believe a good set of skills to boost would be Brain Freeze, Donnybrook, and Futility Belt. The effect of this class mod should be removed entirely and replaced with Cyro immunity along with any Cyro damage taken restoring some percentage of health. This class mod would become way more useful and would make having the Cyro element on your splash weapons much more useful. At the very least, it would be interesting to play around with.
- Current Effects: Zane gains up to 50% Bonus Shock Damage based on his remaining action skill duration. The more duration remaining, the greater the bonus. This effect stacks.
- Current Skills Boosted: Adrenaline, Borrowed Time, Good Misfortune.
It seems the intention behind this class mod is to enable players to keep Zane’s action skills up and rewarding them with bonus shock damage while doing so. I think this is a decent idea, but a poorly executed attempt at it. Adrenaline is an almost entirely wasted skill on this class mod for two reasons, one is that it’s entirely unnecessary to have once you have the guardian skill Topped off as that already gives a 200% increase to cooldown rate while shields are full, greatly diminishing the impact Adrenaline has on your cooldown rate as it also only applies when your shields are full. And secondly, the idea with this class mod is to keep your action skills up, which Adrenaline adds no benefit to. To also add onto the poor execution, since you aren’t using the Seein’ Dead while using the Conductor, you won’t be activating Good Misfortune enough to keep your action skills up or their durations full, greatly reducing the impact the bonus shock damage will have.
This class mod desperately needs a way of keeping action skills up during the entirety of combat to be effective, so the one major thing I would suggest adding to this class mod would be to add the effect of when applying any shock status effect to an enemy you have a 25% chance of resetting your action skill durations. Having this effect would make it much easier to make use of the 50% bonus shock damage while not needing to constantly get kills to keep it at maximum. I would also suggest increasing the damage bonus from 50% to 100%, as shock generally isn’t the most useful element and is not as impactful as Zane’s SNTNL Cyro anointment or just using two different ASE bonus 50% elemental damage. I would also like to swap out Adrenaline for a different skill, but there isn’t any obvious choice for a skill that would fit this class mod in my opinion. I would probably boost either Praemunitus, Cool Hand, or Violent Violence to give this class mod a bit more punching power.
- Current Effects: Kill Skill: Whenever Zane kills an enemy he gains increased accuracy, handling, critical hit damage, status effect damage and status effect chance.
- Current Skills Boosted: Good Misfortune, Playing Dirty, Violent Violence
Prior to the release of DLC 1 and Mayhem 2.0, or even Mayhem 4, the Executor class mod was Zane’s go-to class mod. Looking back on that now, it’s sad realizing that his best class mod was one with only a 20% bonus crit damage and that boosted Playin’ Dirty with Violent Violence. Without knowing the exact percentage bonus this class mod now gives, it’s hard to suggest changes, but from briefly using it, I know that it isn’t high enough to make it worth considering over the Seein’ Dead class mod. The skills this class mod boosts are alright, but without a way of activating Good Misfortune without getting kills it goes under utilized on this class mod. If the effects of Seein’ Dead were swapped with Seein’ Red, this class mod probably wouldn’t need much changing. But with that said, I’ll make some suggestions that can be made for it if that isn’t happening.
This class mod should give both a 25% or even 50% bonus effectiveness to all of Zane’s kill skills and increase the duration of all his kill skills by 7 to 15 seconds. If these two effects were added, this would enable players to more easily keep their kill skills up while also putting it on more equal footing with the Seein’ Dead class mod which also gives a 25% bonus effectiveness to all of Zane’s kill skills. As for skills, I would consider swapping Good Misfortune out with Brain Freeze or consider allowing 1 point boosts on class mods to one point skills and give a boost to either Confident Competence or Death Follows Close, allowing this class mod to really stand out from under the shadow of Seein’ Dead.
- Current Effects: Damaging an enemy with a non-critical hit grants Zane a stack that gives a 25% critical hit damage bonus and a 5% chance for non-critical hits to score a critical hit. The effect can be stacked 5 times and the non-critical hit bonus uses all stacks when triggered.
- Current Skills Boosted: Adrenaline, Brain Freeze, Like a Ghost
The Hustler is one of Zane’s strangest class mods as it’s entirely centered around boosting crit damage, something Zane only has one skill involved with even remotely which is Brain Freeze. Without the boosts to crit damage on this class mod getting crazy, I feel having a class mod centered entirely around crit damage is wasted on Zane since he has no other means of boosting crit damage. In my opinion, the effect of this class mod needs to be scrapped entirely and replaced with something else entirely different.
Currently, I don’t have any ideas for unique effects that I feel should be put on this class mod. If anyone posts on this thread with any good suggestions I will edit them in here and give you credit for the idea. As for skills on this class mod, I don’t think any of them belong on this class mod and should also be entirely replaced with 3 different skills. In my opinion there is just nothing to work with to fix this class mod, it needs to be entirely replaced.
- Current Effects: Zane’s Weapon Damage and Movement Speed are increased. The lower his shield, the greater the bonus. Whenever Zane activates his action skill he breaks his shield.
- Current Skills Boosted: Like a Ghost, Supersonic Man, Violent Momentum.
The Infiltrator is pretty much a poor man’s Antifreeze now with the addition of the very strange of effect of breaking shield when starting an action skill. This effect could’ve been useful on other Vault hunters, or if there were more shields, weapons, or skills of Zane’s that made use of shields being empty, but Zane has multiple skills like Confident Competence and Adrenaline which rely on Zane’s shields being full and only one which is made more effective when his shields are depleted, that being Rise to the Occasion. This class mod really lacks identity and in its current form has no use in any build.
I would replace the effect of this class mod entirely with an effect that greatly reduces the range at which enemies will detect you when the Digi-Clone is active. I would also replace the skill Like a Ghost with Trick of the Light. I’d also consider adding an additional effect of giving an additional 50% bonus Cyro or Radiation damage against enemies targeting the clone. I think this class mod would at the very least be interesting to use while mobbing and offer a unique playstyle in the theme of an Infiltrator.
- Current Effects: Whenever Zane damages an enemy with his weapon, he has a chance to automatically activate all of his Kill Skills. Additionally, his Kill Skills gain a +25% effect bonus.
- Current Skills Boosted: Donnybrook, Violent Violence, Playin’ Dirty
Like I said in the introduction, I believe the effects of the Seein’ Dead class mod should be swapped with the effects of the Seein’ Red skill. This would make the rest of these class mods much more viable, create much more build diversity, and make the Seein’ Red capstone much more impactful.
I would at least consider leaving the 25% bonus kill skill effectiveness on the Seein’ Dead to offload some of the overall power the current effect of this class mod has. I would also consider replacing the Playin’ Dirty skill with either Violent Momentum or Violent Speed as boosting Playin’ Dirty really isn’t necessary, especially when the Executor already does.
- Current Effects: Grants Zane’s Digi-Clone the Binary System augment. Whenever Zane’s clone receives melee damage, it creates a shock nova around it.
- Current Skills Boosted: Best Served Cold, Duct Tape Mod, Pocket Full of Grenades
I lied when I said the Techspert and the Cold Warrior were tied for being Zane’s worst class mod. This is definitely his worse class mod, giving him boosts to two skills reliant on grenades, and a skill far down the green tree that only gives Cyro novas. On top of that, the effect only gives Zane’s clone its worst augment and additional Cyro novas when it is meleed. This class mod too should be entirely scrapped and replaced with something else. Just going off the skills, maybe centering the class mod around grenades and launchers would be an interesting route to go down. You could give it the effect of 50% bonus movement speed while holding a launcher and 100% bonus slide speed while holding a launcher and giving boosts to any of Violent Speed, Violent Momentum, Pocket Full of Grenades, Duct Tape Mod, Supersonic Man, or Cold Bore and also renaming the class mod to like ‘Demolition Man’. The bottom line is that nothing about this class mod makes sense, and is definitely both his strangest and worst class mod currently.
- Current Effects: Kill skill. +15% chance on kill to recharge SNTNL cooldown and duration.
- Current Skills Boosted: Ready for Action, Rise to the Occasion, Really Expensive Jacket
Last but not quite least is the Techspert. The effect, even after the buff, is incredibly underwhelming when there is both the Seein’ Dead and Calm Cool Collected to reset action skill duration which both effect all of Zane’s action skills, not just SNTNL. On top of that, you have two fairly underwhelming skills boosted on this class mod, those being Rise to the Occasion and Really Expensive Jacket. This class mod really doesn’t have a purpose, and needs to pretty much be scrapped and replaced like some of his other class mods to be more impactful.
I would scrap the current effect of a percent chance to restore SNTNL’s duration and add the effect of boosting action skill damage by 100% as well as any damage done by any of Zane’s action skills to give a 20% chance of resetting action skill duration and cooldown. I would also replace all three skills with Synchronicity, Salvation, and Boom. Enchance. This would really boost the effectiveness of the Clone and Drone and potentially making the Drone’s damaging augments legitimately useful.
Final Thoughts:
Zane’s classmods overall need a lot of reworking to be made effective. Simply increasing the numbers/percentage bonuses of their current effects isn’t going to make them better, outside of possibly the Antifreeze. Time needs to be taken to scrap the worst of his class mods and give them more unique effects that warrant at least consideration by players. Swapping the effects of the Seein’ Dead class mod with the Seein’ Red skill would also aid in making at least some of these class mods worth considering as well. I hope some of these suggestions will be taken into consideration by the developers when making future changes to Zane’s class mods and I hope to see his class mods in a better state soon.