Zane still relies on See’in Dead as the class mod that fixes his character. The guy is entirely kill skill based, and doesn’t come online till he kills something, this is especially noticeable during boss fights.
This all leaves See’in Dead as the only class mod worth using, which is a huge problem.
No other Vault Hunter relies so heavily on a single item (from a DLC mind you) just to play their character. That’s embarrassing Gearbox!
Yeah, that’s pretty much my opinion. If they’d swapped Seein’ Dead and Seein’ Red around, then it would’ve worked. As it is, I’m still using Seein’ Dead on all my Zanes, especially end game.
CCC makes Executor absolutely viable. With Seein’ Red no longer blue tree’s capstone, you no longer have to go into so deep into the blue tree (though Playing Dirty is still a top DPS choice). I do anyway but that’s just because I’m used to it.
The problem isn’t that Seein’ Dead “fixes” his character. Seein’ Dead isn’t a fix for anything. It’s an overkill. The problem is that, in certain situations, Kill Skill uptime is a problem. But, as you can get them to trigger on ASA, and you can increase their duration significantly (through various skills), it’s not a massive hole. The biggest problem is FFYL (Hexxusz0r keeps highlighting this), but in terms of mobbing? I’m rolling M8 with an Executor and I have no problems in general with AS uptime and therefore Kill Skill uptime.
People use Seein’ Dead because it’s the best. Nothing more than that. It’s the most convenient, it requires the least effort, and that’s what appeals. It doesn’t mean that other builds do not work.
Yeah, and MNTS cannon is the “Fix Zane” action skill. Use it with seein red and there’s practically no reason to run seein dead. With where he’s at currently, I feel that seein dead is only particularly helpful for bossing, which it definitely shines at. But that’s not really something to complain about because Flak is the same way with bounty hunter.
Frankly, most of Zane’s coms are totally viable now. Executor, antifreeze, infiltrator, conductor, and even hustler are all perfectly usable. You just have to build around them. For example, I’ve been doing a dome/clone build with the infiltrator and an ASA nova burner for a while now and it destroys at mobbing; I can wipe rooms in an instant and I actually want my AS to end sometimes. Of course Techspert, Shockerator, and especially cold warrior are still dogshit, but look at the other characters; they all have a few coms that just aren’t very good.
Yes, as a character, Zane is fundamentally reliant on his action skills, an absurd amount of kill skills, and various other conditional effects. Seein dead “solves” that by making it easy to keep these things active all the time, but it’s not the only way. Need your action skills to stay up indefinitely? Spec CCC and brain freeze, or Good Misfortune and Borrowed Time. Need kill skills to keep going? Literally spend 11 points to get seein red and use cannon. Can’t rely on salvation for healing? Use dome. Have trouble getting out of FFYL? Use clone with old u, or ya know, stay in the dome. Worst comes to worst, all your stuff runs out and ya can’t do damage or stay alive, so what do ya do? How bout wait a couple seconds for your cooldowns and start the loop over again. Problems solved. Sure it sucks that they’re problems in the first place, but seein dead is not the only solution.
Moral of the story is, yeah Seein Dead is still top tier because it’s easy to use and great for bossing, but it is far from necessary. Zane has a lot of solid options now. And I’d be willing to bet that people who think otherwise just haven’t tried them yet.
It is a fix for no ffyl and it breaks stacking skills
But think about all those hoops you had to jump through just to be “decent” with a different class mode. Compared to just putting on “See’in Dead” and going from there.
See’in Dead is both easier and better in almost every way. It fixes the biggest fundamental flaw with Zane. No other class mode can compare to it.
And this would be fine but it’s clear “See’in Dead” was made to fix the flaw with Zane at launch, where he was the weakest Vault Hunter by a noticable margin. The biggest complain to players was accessing his procs behind kill skills better, and keeping them up especially during boss fights. What Gearbox should have done though is reworked “See’in Red” or made like many said switch “See’in Dead” and See’in Red", and putting the now “See’in Dead” talent near the top of the tree.
Gearbox fixed all the Blue tree neccassity problems, but missed out on the fact Zane can still only really use one class mode in order to access his abilities with better uptime. Honestly, all they have to do now is switch “See’in Dead” and “See’in Red” and he’d probably be perfect.
The biggest issue with Zane is that most if not all of his “fixes” are behind pay walls. If you buy only the base game, how many viable Mayhem 10/11 builds are there? I don’t know, I am usually to busy using my seeing dead crutch.
I mean, there are literally examples in this thread. I’m pretty sure I can take my CCC / Executor build to M10 if I wanted (currently on M8). Don’t sleep on the COM buffs that were made not that long ago.
As I’m going to get tired of saying, I’m sure: just because Seein’ Dead is the best, doesn’t mean you can’t use the others.
(except Cold Warrior. Don’t try to use Cold Warrior)
honestly not much you can still let double barrel carry you and use executor and hope clone procs your kill skills. but best vanilla set up with no seein dead would be conductor CCC which is also a dlc com lol.
there is no debate that purple tree also makes big difference in how easy you can breathe on zane. i literally only play ASE barrier mantis executor and still plow. mantis makes a lot of skills useless for example borrowed time and synchronicity lose value ccc becomes needless etc. so i would agree that by far you get a lot of freedom on zane with paid content.
CCC vanilla with no clone inavitably runs into big problems such as runing out of kill skills and not being to keep good anointment active. you can not use any sort of ase (which are the best ones with next two mags and ase splash) so i would say the most carry vanilla non clone setup that can still do m11 would be executor urad ccc but it is far behind other options. thankfully double barrel exists and you do not eaxctly need to play the game clone can do it for you.
That entire explanation just makes me a little sad. I played with the clone, and I agree with you that it’s viable, but I like to shoot my guns in a FPS game and have that be the meat of gameplay. They overdid the clone damage in my opinion, but at least it’s an option.
The mantis cannon just opens up so many options though. Also the green tree is absolute garbage except for CCC and brainfreeze you are always better off using points elsewhere. I actually enjoyed CCC when the game came out and it was a fun challenging option that needed some tweaks, but alas, GBX decided to take the easy way with Seeing Dead.
Vanilla Zane outside of a clone build at this time seems like a handicap. I guess it makes sense to incentivize dlc sales, it doesn’t exactly sit well with me though. They never balanced or fixed Zane, they simply added paid content on top until the character was good (I think he is arguably the most or second most powerful character in game with seeing dead and purple tree added in the mix).
you can still mob with ccc dome drone executor to be full vanilla but u just don be doin no bossin with that shait
Agreed.
That is essentially my biggest gripe. They never fixed Zane’s core issue. Just patched him up with DLC content.
So now he technically “works” but not for the right reasons. You use any other class mod for him and you need to build around it, but you slap on “See’in Dead” and it takes much less effort to see similar if not better results.