0 voters
Now that the new skill trees have been out for a couple of weeks, I’m wondering what the general consensus is about the 4th skill trees for each character. Feel free to actually rank them in your post and provide a brief explanation.
Your question feels fundamentally unfair to me. Maybe it’s my own bias in that I’m assuming ppl will evaluate your question from a damage/power perspective and I don’t think that’s a fair way to evaluate the new skill trees.
People can evaluate them however they like. If power / damage is what concerns them, then they can rank them based on that if they so choose. It’s also why I mentioned providing a brief explanation, so I can have some insight into why the person is ranking them the way that they are.
Zane’s tree is the one that feels more seamless. It adds a very different kind of action skill (instant activation instead of long duration) that doesn’t feel off.
The skills add a lot without feeling compartmentalized, giving new strengths to old habits (everyone is used to hit crits, now we have even more incentives to do so, for example) and bringing in play old unused things like the Hustler com.
Imho it’s been done by the book.
Amara…
They increased the good things about her (melee), made it better (movement speed, frozen and splash mechanics), then gave her perks that support other action skills…
So even if you don’t use the Purple DodgeBall of Death, purple tree skills/augments are so good they make any build better.
Zane obviously… access to ase, insane skills power… In addition I think Zane new tree has less bugs than the others.
Moze because she gets a li’l Iron Bear and that’s cute af
Definitely not Fl4k from a functional perspective Zane’s functions the best with little to no problems. I think everyone else is gonna need patches to fix and help them a little.
FL4K’s is horrible. The trap does nothing (damage really needs to be buffed) and the loader bot as a pet is completely useless. 90% of the time he’s on the opposite side of the map as me. I’ve always used at least part of the green tree to allow my pet to revive me and he’s so far away the skill point is wasted. I’ve now switched back to the jabber.
Amara’s also doesn’t do enough damage and the ball or whatever you call it gets stuck too often.
Iron cub is not bad, but at least so far (I’ve only used it on a new character so I’m at level 30) it’s not operational very long. With Moze I usually use the rocketeer mod to keep Iron Bear killing things for quite awhile but it doesn’t seem to work with Iron Cub.
I chose Zane b/c the spy mod coupled with the skills most closely resembles using Seein’ Dead without having to use it. My only complaint is the cannon itself is useless as it does no damage whatsoever. Again, I’ve only used on a lower level character but even at lower levels it takes multiple hits to kill a basic psycho or bandit. Also, your action skills (such as SNTL) do not stay up anywhere near as long as when using Seein’ Dead (though I figure it will increase as I level the character up and allocate more blue tree points).
Regardless of how people evaluate what is considered good in a skill tree to determine how best it is, it says alot looking at the poll results for Fl4k.
let’s all act as if zane’s new skill tree did not turn him into completely and retardedly op entity giving him not only million% damage and cool down but also infinitely easy access to survival with conjunction to blue tree. yeah amara has sort of cool tree as well but cmon now on every metric zane’s new skill tree is just stupid good. they made zane into infinitely better access to any kind of anoints he wants but most broken ones being ase and ass. and even if one would play like me which is no anoints still it is just such a no brainer to go spec into commitment gather up some crit realod speed fire rate and add more of it from the blue while still being able to have barrier on despite always active life steal yeah you have a god on your hand and you give him option to use anoints 
pfff what is not to like about purple tree. even the redundant skills on there like art of war are actually good with drone/canon/cold bore you can hit for obviously needless amounts of damage.
yes people will pick zane and they will be 200% right about it even tho amara got some nice ass tree as well.
Zane, hands down. I actually enjoy zane a lot atm (my least played VH by far).
(Best = personal fun factor)
It’s not a fair competition. Zane has the most garbage skill tree out there (under cover). Full of bugs, bad synergies and just down right bad skills. Also he was the only one that didn’t have a reliable ASE action skill which kept him from using the best annoints in the game. So ya, Zane is gonna win because he will now have 3 viable skill trees and access to ASE annoints. Something all the other vault hunters already had. So he will see the most improvement and options open up, which will make it appear the best improved as the under cover tree and all his base game class mods die a horrible ignored death.
Fl4k at 3% just says everything about the short end of the stick he received.
Zane definitely has the best skill tree. Not only is it really powerful, the power it has builds from synergies, whilst encouraging new ways to play the class. MNTIS is the best action skill in the game hands down - and does alot more than being an anointment/Kill Skill proccer - it can apply debuffs, drag enemies in, freeze, and if played right, even be incredibly powerful on its own. It also doesn’t suffer from poor design stemming from Mayhem scaling BS or whatever. I do think it is a little too strong right now, and Commitment is a way too much of a win button - but GB should fix that down the road.
Amara’s is currently 2nd best by default. Amara is really very strong, and her new skill tree reflects lot of the character’s strength - easy damage, great survivability etc. But I feel all of her skilltrees lack something to tie the whole deal - in other words, synergy. Her purple tree does alot, but not synergistically, lacking cohesiveness and identity. Maybe once they fix Infusion/FE to actually work properly the tree will find its feet. Also, Mayhem scaling on skills which shouldn’t get it (Unweave the Rainbow, Shooting Star) is just horrible design.
For Moze, I think as an Iron Bear tree it is great. But that seems to go against the design of Iron Cub, which was obviously to have Iron Cub as a support to Moze herself. So to be the tree with the least focus on Moze personal DPS when she is able to play on the field 24/7 is just odd. Also, the actual design of the DPS skills is just boring an uninspired, and doesn’t really build from potential synergies of dealing incendiary damage/iron cub. And Big Surplus 1) being active when AS is on cooldown 2) receiving Mayhem scaling just tells you all.
Uh, where do I start with Fl4k. Positives wise, it is a amazing pet tree - easily increasing their damage by many times. And uh, Fuzzy Math is a great skill - albeit still worse than 1 point in salvation. The rest of the skill tree is just really mediocre. Neglecting to give a single skill which buffs Fl4k’s own DPS is just really odd - no other skill tree in BL2, TPS and 3 actually has that problem. And buffing shields just goes against Take This - given the best shields with pet generally involve breaking them consistently or keeping them down. While Fuzzy Math is great, it is the only incentive to wade through 4 tiers of mediocrity, and Capacitance and Keep Them Safe have got to be some of the worse capstones/tier fives. Even the skills with potential, like Not Even a Challenge and Monkey Do just generally fall flat from poor design.
Well what a suprise this was i used all trees on the vault hunters zanes and amara are the only standouts they might aswell throw fl4ks and moze skill trees away they are not fun at all moze needed something to trigger ase annointments fl4k needed to be able to survive well he got it but heres the catch you cant do alot of damage so again its useless whoever done zanes tree needs a raise its clear they know what fun is cant believe some of the trees were paid content.
A couple random notes…
Amara’s new death ball is a bit cumbersome. It gets stuck on terrain and buried in the ground way too easily… it’s a bit frustrating because when it gets stuck you can’t summon it back to you most of the time and it just sits there useless until your AS times out. I wish it could just clip through everything. And I also wish when you summoned it back to you, it would return to the point in front of you where you first spawned it, making it easier to bap it at the next enemy instead of summoning it back, turning around looking for where it actually is and then walking around it to take aim at the next enemy, etc. It’s all a little cumbersome, frustrating, and flow-breaking as it is right now.
I had started a fresh Amara focusing on that tree, and to be brutally frank, I just gave up after a while and instead started a fresh Moze focusing on the cub, which turned out to be a lot more fun.
how is there competition?
from what i hear
amaras orb is literally so buggy and glitchy its hard if in some situations nay impossible to make perfect use of it
clunky and not well coded / thought through as it gets stuck alot
fl4ks new pet seems buggy aswell, and his trap seems also o not work that well
Iron cub is aparently a suicidal tickler with the only benefit being that it allows moze to use more annointments which is literally the only powerspike she rly sees from using cub
zane gets a shoulder canon and crit bonis, like okay some of his best mods dont even work with it like conductor literally losing damage if you use this
but it again allows for annoints, and also firepower if you are reloading
and if you rly want to also the power to use differen mods… though seeing dead is still the best by far… didnt try his new one but aparently its nothing new
so yeah
3 pretty glitchy / badly designed skilltrees/ skills vs zanes kinda okay one
no match for anybody
especially since zane desperatly needs some things
but even he has some dumb winners like run and shoot… moze literally gains while doing so for the same skill lifesteal
not all VHs are born equally
but man
its kinda fun to see how bad it actually is
i didnt say he should get lifesteal
i said
moze has the same skill, she invests the same skillpoint in this
and gets MORE out of the skill
My own ranking from best to worst:
1. Amara
Great synergy with her green tree and melee in general, a good array of passives and an obscenely powerful action skill (when it doesn’t get stuck in the terrain). I think it’s a really well rounded tree in general.
2. Zane
While I find the cannon to be powerful and fun to use (it’s actually pretty cheesy using nova shields with empty/full effects on ASA ), I think a lot of the new passives either should have been in Zane’s kit from the start (shooting while sprinting and crit damage, the latter could have been added to the green tree) or feel out of place (bonus damage while scoping on Zanic, really?).
Still, finally being able to keep action skills and kill skills up without relying on C,C,C and Seein’ Dead feels amazing.
3. FL4K
The passives are pretty good. The pet bonuses are fantastic, specially crits and shield sharing, and being able to recharge your shield on crit is a huge boost to FL4K survivability. The capstone feels a bit underwhelming because it makes you lose any bonuses you get while your shield us full, but at least I can finally make a Deathless build on my favourite character.
The pets, and more specifically the WAR Loader, have some obscene damage output and their attack command feels more responsive than with the other pets… BUT they don’t teleport on you when falling behind so Gamma Burst is pretty much required for loaders. But even when taking that little issue into account, they are infinitely betters pets than Jabbers.
Finally, let’s talk about the action skill. It’s a fantastic tool for mobbing and ends the Sirens’ monopoly on crowd control… but once you reach a boss it becomes 100% useless. Maybe make it deal dame or debuff enemies in its area of effect?
4. Moze
More incendiary damage, more IB damage, more cooldown reduction… yawn.
And why would I ever want to trade a pretty good OH SH- button for a dumb AI controlled pet that is unable to notice (and therefore shoot at) Graveward, deals reduced damage and only seems to excel at killing himself by shooting at barrels, walls and enemies in melee range.
I guess spamming emotes while the game plays itself might be fun for some, but definitely not for me.