(Moze New Skill Tree Guide) Rating All the Skill Points on the surface

Borderlands 3 Moze the Gunner
#1

Heya Buddies, Today we are going to go over my favorite Vault Hunter Moze’s New Skill Tree and rate each skill point. Obviously subject to change until the tree launches but I thought why not look at the surface and evaluate each point. Hopefully this will be a helpful guide on what to choose, I will be rating based on how well it can work in the current meta. Ratings will be in 5 star format.

Video Verison of this:

(Cause’ why read when you can let your ears do all the work)

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★★☆☆☆ Biofuel: Whenever Moze or Iron Bear ignites an enemy, they both regenerate health for a short time. Duration: 8 seconds

Each Point giving: Health Regen: Up to +0.7% per sec & Iron Bear Armor Regen: Up to +0.5% per sec. 5 Points Max

I Feel like this is a niche Ability, I don’t feel like the health regen will help Moze herself very well but it might help Iron Cub a little. Most cases before we never have to worry about Iron Bear’s health but its possible that we need worry about Iron Cub more. There is already Vampyr which can regen Moze & Iron Bear. The only benefit for this is it regens both Moze & Iron Bear health at the same time.

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★★★★★ Big Surplus: While Moze’s Action Skill is cooling down, she deals bonus Incendiary Damage.

Each Point giving: Bonus Damage: 5% of Gun Damage. 3 Points Max

This Ability is amazing, it has a 100% Uptime with most builds. Iron Cub on use will go onto cooldown and using Iron Bear Auto Pilot ability causes it to go onto cooldown so you will get the bonus all the time. Very helpful in any situation and a passive fire element on all guns you use is very useful since most enemies are flesh.

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★★★☆☆ Really Big Guns: Iron Bear gains increased Damage.

Each Point giving: Iron Bear Damage: +4%. 5 Points Max

You will get a total of 20 % more Iron Bear Damage from 5 points which is a heavy point investment for just 20%. Luckily its saving grace is its placement on the skill tree. Since its a tier 1 ability it can be specced into without spending points to go down a tree you don’t want to go down (Assuming you don’t wont this tree). I can see it being used in a lot of builds, and its pretty free. Nothing amazing though.

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★☆☆☆☆ Double Time: While Moze’s Action Skill is active, she and Iron Bear gain increased Movement Speed.

Each Point giving: Movement Speed: +4%. 3 Points Max

This is only a 12% movement increase for both Moze and Cub which isn’t even sprinting speed. Its really bad. Perhaps there will be a class mod that saves this skill but for now its just bad.

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★★★☆☆ Harmonious Havoc: Moze gains increased Gun Damage for each weapon, shield, and grenade that matches the element of her gun.

Each Point giving: Gun Damage: +2% per matching item. 5 Points Max

This is really really good for builds where you want to live up the fantasy all of going all in on one element. Its not hard to match elements in the game since grenade slots are just anointment investments and most shields can be any element. A ton of builds already use fire weapons so you could just bite the bullet and make sure all your guns are fire element. You can easily get a 50% more gun damage with this and thats a ton more damage. But I only give 3 stars because its a lot of work to optimize this ability for the players who don’t want to have to farm over and over for specific elements. Plus the one of the best Vampyr Proc-er is the CMT and CMT cant have an element so those are pretty big downsides.

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★☆☆☆☆ Explosive Fury: Moze and Iron Bear gain increased Status Effect Damage and Status Effect Chance.

Each Point giving: Status Effect Chance: +9% Status Effect Damage: +5%. 3 Points Max

Currently in the game Status effect damage is abysmal. and status effect chance doesn’t really matter since Moze does a great job at shooting tons and tons of bullets so the easier ignite chance doesn’t matter. Unfortunate that Status Effect damage is so bad atm; Perhaps there will be a rework on Status Effects Scaling?

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★★★☆☆ (Action Skill Augment) Fuel for The Fire: Whenever Moze or Iron Cub inflicts a Status Effect on an enemy, Iron Cub’s armor is restored.

Armor Restore: 12% of Max Armor

This is really really huge, you don’t have to ignite you can use any element you want but what it doesn’t say is whether or not there is a cooldown. I know we can’t tell right now but if this didn’t have a cooldown you would be able to restore Iron Cub’s Health Instantly using the right build. If it has no cooldown I will rank it at 5 stars but we will just have to wait and see. Also I feel like there are better Augments to use than this one.

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★☆☆☆☆ (Action Skill Augment) Baby Nukes: Whenever Iron Cub is deployed or destroyed, it triggers a nuclear explosion, Dealing massive Radiation Damage.

This ability seems really fun but it doesn’t seem worth it at all, it will probably be able to only one shot certain non boss or badass enemies but its biggest downside is that this is only when the Cub is deployed or destroyed. The whole tree is working to try to keep him alive and around longer so you won’t be able to see this effect very often. Unless you were you make a super high cooldown build that makes iron cub fodder but I don’t think that sounds very viable. Depending on how this scales with mayhem levels it could be amazing but I don’t think gearbox will allow this to deal too much damage because of how free you can activate it.

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★★★★★ Fire Up: Whenever Moze or Iron Bear applies a Status Effect to an enemy, she gains increased Fire Rate for a short time. This effect stacks.

1 Point max: Fire Rate: +5% Duration: 12 seconds Max Stacks: 5

This is super free way to increase Moze DPS since we already can deal millions of damage as her, being able to deal the damage faster just sounds amazing. Most of this points in this tree can be synergized with cloud of lead since that makes our bullets deal fire damage so you will be able to activate this ability even using a kinetic weapon. Iron Cub could also proc the stacks for us so getting max stacks on this ability is super easy. Definitely a must have on this tree.

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★★☆☆☆ Nitrotrinadium Engines: Iron Bear gains increased Maximum Fuel and Action Skill Cooldown Rate.

Each Point giving: Maximum Fuel: +5% Action Skill Cooldown Rate: +4%. 5 Points Max

This sounds like a decent skill for piloting Iron Bear but you have to go really far down in the Skill Tree to even get this ability since its Tier 4. And Moze doesn’t need the extra Action Skill Cooldown Rate since she gets plenty from the skill point Grizzled already. Iron Cub already has a reduce Fuel Rate so you can better spend your points somewhere else. If you desperately need more maximum fuel for some reason go for it.

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★★★★★ Never Going to Give You Up: Whenever Moze or Iron Bear applies a Status Effect to an enemy, Iron Bear gains Fuel. This skill has diminishing returns.

Each Point giving: Fuel Returned: Up to 5%. 5 Points Max

Just like “Fire Up” this is very free since you can use any element. Iron bear/cub and Moze can proc this easily. Combine this with deadlines and you’ll be able to stay in Iron Bear/Keep Iron Cub up for a ridiculous amount of time. Super easy and super good especially with Flare Class Mod

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★★★★☆ (Action Skill Augment) My Little Friend: Iron Cub Spawns with an Incendiary Vladof Assault Rifle in addition to Iron Cub’s other weapons.

This Ability Allows you to ignite enemies with Iron Cub even when you aren’t using any fire weapons with him. This allows you to open up your possibilities with what weapon you can equip on him and this easily increases his dps without having to do anything. Awesome to have to activate all the skill point bonuses on this tree even faster.

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★★★★★ (Action Skill Augment) Efficiency Engine: Moze Gains Increased Gun Damage. The Longer Iron Cub has been active, the greater the bonus

Gun Damage: +0.5% Per Second

Now we don’t know what the cap for this is and whatever the cap is will determine the usefulness of this Skill but I can’t imagine it being below 50% at the very least. The whole skill tree and a lot of meta builds specialize in keeping Iron Bear out on the field as long as possible so this bonus gun damage is extremely free. Plus a few seconds in borderlands can go in a snap so you’ll see your gun damage increase at a rapid pace. Every percent helps at end game and this is one of the most brain-dead ways to do it, this will probably be your go to action skill augment in most scenarios.

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★★★☆☆ Feature Creep: Iron Bear gains increased Damage and Damage Resistance.

1 Point Max: Iron Bear Damage: +18% Iron Bear Damage Resistance: +45%

If Iron Cub is Squishy this will a necessary point but if he isn’t this will allow him to survive on the field longer. The Amount of Damage isn’t amazing but it does help a little. Iron Bear I feel doesn’t need the resistance, and I don’t see a lot of people going all the way to tier 5 to just get this skill on this tree when duel specing. It has Potential but its seems just average

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★☆☆☆☆ Limit Break: Moze gains increased Action Skill Cooldown Rate whenever she or Iron Bear inflicts a Status Effect on an enemy. This effect stacks.

Each Point giving: Cooldown Rate: +4%Duration: 12 secondsMax Stacks: 10. 5 Points Max

Another Action Skill Cooldown Rate ability that I feel like Moze doesn’t need. Sure it gives a total of 120% cooldown rate at max stacks and points but Moze already has Grizzled as said before that already brings Iron Bear Back really really quickly by it self. The 3 points are better spent somewhere else, Instead of this Cooldown rate you could be using those 3 points for more damage.

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★☆☆☆☆ Superior Firepower: Whenever Moze or Iron Bear inflicts a Status Effect on an enemy, they gain increased Status Effect Damage.

1 Point Max: Status Effect Damage: +20% Duration: 8 seconds Max Stacks: 5

Once again Status effect damage is crap currently. Unless its reworked this is a dead skill. Making a 15k dot into a 30k Dot means nothing when you deal millions of damage with each characters main kits.

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★★★★★ Running on Fumes: Whenever Moze or Iron Bear ignites an enemy, Iron Bear does not consume fuel for a short time.

1 Point Max: Duration: 6 seconds

This is absolutely crazy, Iron bear already does great on fuel but being able to not consume it every time you ignite someone is bonkers. I feel like this has huge potential when piloting seeing as right now you are looking to stay in mech as long as possible since Iron Bear does insane amounts of damage. I can see this being the go to capstone for most Iron Bear Builds from now on. Only limiting factor is that you have ignite someone to activate but you can always just go for one Incendiary Railgun/Flamethrower to allow for easy procing and just call it a day. Iron Cub will be able to stay on the field for a ridiculous amount of time as well. This is a really fun & powerful skill point

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Alrighty buddies that all I have for today. I am accepting critique from anyone, tell me what you would change about this or if you feel like something is wrong. I always love hearing what the community has to say. Obviously when the Tree get released for the game I will update this accordingly after play testing it. I hope this was helpful for some of you and I hope everyone has a great day.

3 Likes
In-Depth Guide to Moze's 4th Skill Tree?
#2

I’ll wait until it’s release and we can test it. There are some things I disagree with the review here but until I can try it out, it’s kinda pointless for me to make a case.

3 Likes
#3

Yeah I’m excited to test it out and revise this post

#4

Yeah there are numerous things about the review that I agree and disagree with, but we have to wait and see if Gearbox actually changes anything based on the feedback from the content creators. Running on Fumes for example doesn’t work like one would imagine as it only halts idle fuel consumption: Bear/Cub firing weapons will still drain fuel despite the capstone being active.

If Big Surplus works the same way as the other non-FitSD bonus incendiary damage skills, then it’s closer to being a 1-star skill than a 5-star one. Those skills do not feed into splash damage or Short Fuse in Moze’s damage formula so the extra DPS they offer is extremely marginal in comparison to other DPS boosts. At best this skill is a one-point wonder, intended more to help ignite enemies for status effect skills rather than being a meaningful DPS boost in itself.

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#5

I’m just wondering why they decided to make Biofuel into health regen instead of health leech like Sustainment is for Amara. I guess they just never want any other VHs to be as good as Amara. Or they want to continually pigeon hole Moze into Vampyr. Especially with Short Fuse, it feels like GB wants to force players into Demo Woman and only Demo Woman with the other trees as support for it. It’s kind of sad when every other damsge skill is judged based on how it affects Short Fuse.

And I’m also hoping for a Status Effect buff, but given GBs past on it, I’m not holding my breath. Its better in BL3 than BL2, but far worse than BL1.

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#6

What surprises me most is that with a new skill tree that is trying to emphasise status effects, there’s no implementation of an increase in status effect duration. Amara’s Anima skill has this and it’s what makes her the best VH to use Elemental Projector relics with. It would be a major QoL improvement for Moze if just one of these new skills buffed that.

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#7

Reckon this might end up on a class mod.
Surprised it’s not on an artifact.

This game needs more artifact types.

#8

Well the tree gives incentive to apply status effects, not just kill with them. In fact as the tree grants bonuses upon applying the effect, making them shorter would benefit more as that would grant more frequent opportunities to apply a status effect. You can however go the scorched earth way with certain weapons. Give a Nothingness doubled status effect damage and it kills multiple enemies at once. It’s quite fun. The good thing is that the status effect damage skills all are relatively easy to get and don’t need too many points.

On the ratings:

  • Big Surplus will probably not work the way its rating was based on. Usually the game differentiates between the states “action skill active” and “action skill on cooldown” where Iron Cubs activity would count as “action skill active” as it is. And from what we have heard from early testers it looks as if the Cub would pretty much be active for minutes at a time.

  • Really Big Guns & Feature Creep: Those skills are misleading as hell and seem to fall into a separate part of the damage formula, making those damage bonuses basically multiplicative to other bonuses (I assume that they are however additive to each other), making those 6 points immensely impactful.

  • Explosive Fury: The damage aspect isn’t too important as Moze has enough damage already, but the 27% additional status effect chance isn’t too bad as the tree depends on you applying those status effects. Still nothing special. For me it’s a 2 star skill.

  • Fire Up is fine and all, but fire rate so far was never really an issue on Moze. It’s a good DPS skill, but unless you run multi-element or equip Iron Cub with Nukes to instantly apply multiple status effects at once, you won’t really profit enough from this skill. 3 stars for me, with potential for 4. But it’s a one point wonder for sure, so I’d still grab it.

  • Superior Firepower can be very much underestimated. It’s a skill that makes certain weapons able to literally burn through enemies. With the right setup you can get to the full 100% bonus very easily. There are few good DoT guns, with the Nothingness being my favorite, but overall I think it’s best used with Iron Bear itself. Also, cut the skill some slack, it’s just 1 point.

2 Likes
#9

I don’t think status effect damage will ever be a thing regardless of how GB buffs it. the reason being is that things already die fast as heck with a meta build. Unless GB brings down the nerf hammer again across the game I don’t see the need to kill things with status effects. Just gun things down till they die. It may be a good pick for those who play casually or for someone who’s leveling from a new game but probably never going to be a pick for people who read forums about the best gear and damage formulas.

#10

While that is true, there are ways to make DoT damage an assistant tool of the player. For example the damage the “aura shields” (like Red Suit) do isn’t a terrible baseline for mobbing and the way they stack damage, especially when coupled with an elemental grenade can kill regular mobs quite easily. It’s just that it isn’t good for bossing. But if you use those shields and elemental singularity grenades to stack elemental effects you will constantly have the full bonus for applying status effects.

As I mentioned a few times already the Nothingness is pretty solid for DoT damage, even on M10 as are the Storm, the Krakatoa and the Recursion. I tested that on Amara with the most basic setup possible when Mayhem 10 first came out. Moze will more than double that DoT damage, so that should be enough to just shoot and burn through regular enemies with 1 shot each.

Then there is the Hellwalker, which is a strong fire gun, fitting the style of the tree perfectly. Yes, it’s DoT is rather mediocre, but that’s not the point. If you combine a good DoT gun, an aura shield and a solid damage gun or two, like the Blood-Starved Beast, you will literally burn through everything, especially if you go all in on one element and match it with Anointments for additional elements. We’re talking about permanent +50/60% gun damage, +127% DoT damage, +25% fire rate, steadily increasing gun damage while Iron Cub is out and a strong incentive for an in-your-face playstyle. It sure is dependant on gear, but there is a lot of potential.

#11

The best DoT weapon is the ION cannon combined with overkill.

Not sure if a zero ammo build is compatible with a DoT build, but could be an interesting challenge.

#12

Dont know if this is the case but in BL2 Gaige DoT build was best used through grenades as their DoT base a lot higher than guns.
If the DoT values of Atlas grenades like the Hex are good enough this has potential to add a lot to your gun damage as it stacks by itself.

#13

Thanks for the insight on my rating it was cool to see another viewpoint on that. You made several good points that I all agreed with. I was surprised to hear about the bonus iron bear damage being better than expected but I’m not the smartest with the damage formula even tho people keep trying to teach me so it was nice that you elaborated on why those damage increases is actually good. Thank you !

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#14

I’m glad I could help.

Also, I wouldn’t call that “not smart”, but rather “not informed to that extend”. Borderlands always was and still is a game series with many different interactions and ways of how things might work and most of the time it’s not obvious. Bonus damage can have multiple ways of how it is applied to the actual gameplay and unfortunately Borderlands so far has never really explained things in a way that actually clears up how the game calculates things “under the hood”.

Borderlands 3 at least uses more uniform language, but it really should just have an encyclopedia for players to read through and just show the way skills affect the gameplay in formulas. That sure would help many people and while there would still be people that just can’t get the hang on how all the math works, it would at least be a better outlet for information in general.

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#15

Is there a way you could explain multiplicative and additive multiplayers in a simple way ahah. It’s hard to understand for me that’s the one that always messes me up. If not that’s okay. Only asking since you’ve have been very nice :slight_smile:

#16

People tend to throw those terms around in ways that don’t really align with the meaning of it.

It’s pretty simple. In the formula same damage types are additive with each other and multiplicative with other damage types. So something like this (splash bonus + other splash bonus) x (gun damage bonus + other gun damage bonus) x (stand alone damage type such as the Flare damage bonus) .

That’s a very basic explanation to really learn about it check here:

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#17

First off, the terms “additive” and “multiplicative”, while used even by the Devs themselves by now aren’t mathematically correct in the way the Borderlands community uses them. It’s basically a distinction between…

  • bonuses that all are added to one spot in the damage formula, they accumulate or are “additive” to each other.
  • and bonuses that get their own spot in the formula, making them overall more meaningful (the reasoning I’ll try to explain below). They multiply with other bonuses.

Now, I keep it as basic as possible. Imagine you have 3 damage bonuses, all worth 30% each.

If those bonuses are all part of the same spot in the formula, they would get thrown on the “stack” like this (our example gun has a base damage of 100):

100 x (1 + 0.3 + 0.3 + 0.3) which you can also just write as
100 x 1.9 = 190

Those 90% bonus damage result in exactly that, 90% bonus damage. They are purely additive to each other. I hope this makes sense so far.

Now, if those bonuses all had their own spot in the formula, we would call them “multiplicative” due to how that would change their impact on the formula, which would be as follows:

The example again starts with a gun with a base damage of 100:

100 x 1.3 x 1.3 x 1.3 = 219.7 damage.

The result is higher? Yes, it is indeed as each bonus got it’s own spot it also got it’s own decimal 1, which makes it so it actually is an increase and not a decrease in the end. That’s why I filled in “1.3” three times in the formula.

Now, just to clear things up a bit here: It’s not as if the game just throws in numbers where the devs think it fits, there are basic rules the dev team follows, which means that various spots in the formula are always present. There is a base value for regular gun damage, for elemental bonus damage, for added damage of each element and so on, but by default those values are at 1.0, meaning they don’t actually have any impact on the result. Its only when bonuses from skills, class mods, artifacts and guardian rank come into play and are added to their respective spots in the formula that all those parts change and result in something that’s not just the base damage of your gun.

It’s always something like this:
Base damage x [gun damage bonus] x [critical modifier] x [elemental bonus] …

And so on. The formula is always the same, but the values are different. And the way and or spots those values are changed on makes a huge difference.

2 Likes
#18

Oh okay you and someone else’s explanation here really helped. Addictive sounds good to remember since it’s just adding of bunch of stuff together. And I’ll remember the multiplicative as just multiplying the numbers together. Awesome that was actually really simply haha thank you. I can’t believe I didn’t understand before, thanks for being a good teacher :slight_smile:

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#19

not sure if its necessarily different from how you’re using it, but for me, or how it was explained to me additive are skills that just get multiplied by and then added to the base category damage, like hp or melee damage for exampe.
say base melee was 500, and you were doing 5000 damage total, a 10% add melee bonus would just bump your damage up to 5050.

While multiplicative skills are those that take in all bonuses and are multiplied by total damage dealt.
With the latter being better as its immune to diminishing returns.

So same values but a multiplicative bonus, and your damage would go up to 5500.

1 Like
#20

anyway i came for a different reason actually, rating the new skill trees are nice but i’m more interested in the current state of each character i.e all the base game skill trees.
Since we’re most likely going to have to give up at least 1 tree to spec into the new ones, I’m wondering what the “best” way to do so would be for each character.

Kind of a full dive on each character with how much damage, defense, or utility is in each individual tree.

I think that would be a lot more interesting than just a analysis of the new skill trees right now. If you’re interested in doing that, it’d be awesome.

1 Like