Zane is the most braindead vault hunter to play, and i am sad

Borderlands 3 Zane the Operative
#1

i love zane but this is the most no effort character you can play post action skill dmg scaling and purple tree and i am not talking about seein dead. even without it executor or spy mantis canon it just go brrrrrrr

i know i know you will tell me gtfo and play fl4k

it is just wrong zane is so invincible on feet and such downer in ffyl i dno. i dno why commitment is such high value and why it is uncapped i dno why clone needs to do 31 times the damage on m11 i dno why you can be fully immune to your splash dot immunity would make more sense. i dno why mantis canon has to be even more easily spammable than raks and fake grasp. why does zane have to be between absolute worst at everything (which i enjoyed :d ) to god among men. ye yea i know there are 10s of setups that no effort the game it is not worse than ib it is not worse than ghastcall fl4k it is not worse than stinger amara but it is just me to say that ccc zane required more effort than anything you can do now is almost insulting because back then we made zane work without ccc and even made old double barrel sntnl work. it is in a huge part fault of ase anoints strength but yeah i am so tired of coming up with self restrictions this rant is aimed at nothing really it kinda hurt when kbk left playing zane post seein dead than kabflash followed it is like i need to try so hard to “not win” on zane but right now ase anoints+mntis is same level of brandead as lightshow clone afking

tl’dr cap commitment at 10 or reduce it’s value and reduce damn anointed damage things die faster than i can shoot them ffs. wtf just for spaming Q 5 times u get 140% dmg and cool down? please how does this make sense

2 Likes
#2

Yeah, they completely ■■■■■■ up the uniqueness of each character after the Nov 9 patch. For some reason, Zane has more crit damage than FL4K, hell even more overall damage than FL4K now. Zane is better at spamming action skills to proc ■■■■■■■■ anointments than FL4K. The list goes on…

Amara is also the better cryo character than Zane now because of her new skill tree. Zanes green tree is completely useless too compared to his power creep purple tree.

I also love how lazy they are, they just straight up gave Zane rushin offensive and now Zane has full immunity to every form of self damage. Poor Moze.

FL4K is supposed to be a glass cannon, but for some reason got a survivability skill tree??? It doesn’t even work half the time too!

I â– â– â– â– â– â– â–  hate this point in the game where every character one shots any boss and one mags raidbosses on the highest difficulty. The only thing that matters now are anointments, groundbreaker, and stupid â– â– â– â– â– â– â–  mayhem scaling. I miss old play styles like CCC Zane or Infiltrator Zane.

6 Likes
#3

Commitment is a skill which makes sense if Seein Dead and Seein Red didn’t exist. The idea of an infinite stacking kill skill restricted by a short duration really appeals to me for a momentum based playstyle - but SD/SR just makes it into a win button which is just kinda sad from a design perspective. GB will probably fix it somewhere down the road and cap it at 10 stacks, which will make it more balanced, but less interesting.

2 Likes
#4

Welp, you guys better deal with it cause it most likely won’t change. Hell, even people on stream team don’t seem to think Commitment is overtuned when the skill is cleary broken with a Spy COM, it even is with Seein’ Dead.

Honestly, I was happy with each character having something special that defines them, well defined pros and cons even if some were clearly favored compared to others (Amara is the dev’s little favorite), but with 4th skill tree it got shattered even more. Guess people who couldn’t stop whining with the “but muuuuuh damage as Zane, where is it :(” and “buuuut Fl4 is too squishy :(” won, this game has so many bs things right now that I don’t even bother playing legit anymore. I embraced Gearbox memes, I steam roll everything with all the broken interactions they introduced, only to see them getting fixed 9 months later when everyone forgot how thoses things were never intended in the game (remember the subprojectiles ASD fix ? ).

#5

Full disclosure, I have none of the DLC and wasn’t even sure what those mods were until I looked them up. This is completely from the POV of a casual player, vanilla game.

Zane was the third character I took to 65 recently (I started playing the game late). He’s the only one I seem to enjoy when playing on M11. Again, it’s not endgame stuff like takedowns…just general gameplay, finishing side quests, etc.

The problems I had with Moze were simple: in her IB, she was a blast, and it was difficult to die. Waiting for cooldown, well, that’s pretty much all I could do, was wait. I tried a lot of builds, but could never get more than chip damage. I lost interest in her for this reason.

Fl4k was pretty awesome for survivability, obviously, but my damage wasn’t any better than Moze. So while I at least felt more engaged while playing Fl4k, I knew deep down I wasn’t really the one doing the killing (it was the Gamma build).

Zane hit the sweet spot for a couple of reasons. Even though the damage was a little better, there is a tactical element that I really love. With Flak I just turned the skag loose and that was it. With Zane I’m always repositioning the clone for advantage or line of sight. But the best part has been the little metagame involving freezing enemies. While I may not be doing a ton of damage, at least I’m able stay engaged with the combat, looking for a series of crits to reset the duration timer. That’s a big reason I stuck with Zane.

All this being said, I do understand exactly what the OP is saying about ffyl. With all of the characters in this game (at least, with no DLC weapons), I find that being in ffyl and no active skill going, is a death sentence. Unless there’s an enemy nearby with 10% health, I just hit the “give up” button. That certainly smacks of balance issues.

It’s a great game, but it never seems as fun after completing the story and moving to mayhem. After that it’s all about trying to solve broken game systems.

#6

gearbox made irreversible mistake when they put so much life steal in game it is same tier of mistake as the bee was in bl2

4 Likes
#7

Before the Seein’ Dead com started Zane’s march to being god tier I was forced to play more tactically than I do now. For me it was part of the fun of playing him. So every time I went into a engagement I would find a trash mob enemy and lower its health to about that 10% sweet spot you identified. Then I ignored it and continued facing off against the rest of the enemies knowing it was there in case I needed a second wind. This was the primary reason I hated the clone because it would sometimes kill my second wind enemy, then die, then leave me to die! :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

Nowadays I’ve thrown tactics out the window and have embraced figuring out how to use the broken mechanics and imbalance of the game to make the guns I like work in M11. :grin:

1 Like
#8

Same here.
I can now play all content using only dahl weapons like god intended :yum:

3 Likes
#9

I’m still happily using my Executor, but noticing the lack of bossing potential on M8 (compared even to M6 or below). Not using MNTIS yet either. I think if I want to get back into taking on (proper) bosses I need to go back to Snowdrift + critswap abuse on slow-projectile waepons.

1 Like
#10

did you not see the videos i posted? how can you have any problems. whatever you do with ase wins istantly, you can do urad or n2m how do you even need crit swap for anything things just melt. if not using MNTIS is a principle why not use clone? or i dno is that out of the use pool?

#11

Haha, haven’t used Clone ever either. I’ve just stuck with my barrier / drone / CCC (with Ice Breaker) setup. Haven’t found a good Front Loader for urad yet either (working on it though).

The thing for me is I was always on about CCC from launch, even when people were ignoring Zane. I went around on old M3 with a Cryo Lucian’s Call just chain-freezing everything (slowly) into oblivion.

I skipped Seein’ Dead on principle, and I kinda skipped clone the same way? Every meta Zane build involved clone, and I wanted to do something off-meta (a bit like you, but you’re a lot better at it). I’m stacking enough ASE +50% elemental Anoints (two or three, I swear - would need to check), but for example I’m barely tickling Wotan even if I can oneshot most of the rest of the Takedown (the Valkyries are a bit tougher but have the critspot for AS refresh - Wotan’s critspot is inaccessible without something like a Cutsman).

#12

you would in that setup want sntnl cryo weapons or consecutive hits or urad. as to wotan i dno man he dies so easy to many weapons, what do you have a sntnl cryo botd would obliterate it same for monarch hornet is good backburner if you catch him still. also hustler com just destroies top half as it can be full frozen through brain freeze. but this topic was created about what zane is post changes with purple tree.

1 Like
#13

Shame SNTL Cryo is still broken (right?). That was what most of my guns had.

But yeah, I guess in terms of the purple tree it’s just power creep. I’m honestly a bit disappointed because the other trees (except maybe clone) aren’t as up-to-scratch. I thought there’d be a bit more variety instead of picking cannon + various oneshot Anoints (like 300 / 90 or whatever).

#14

it is broken but as longas you hold one gun it works so for example if you just use corrosive light show with sntnl cryo on final fight you should still be covered as long as you don switch weapons. but if u have drone delivery hex consecutive hits one will do as well.

#15

Except cryo AS element doesn’t work with infusion or the red capstone

#17

:100: :dart: