Iron bear scaling - your thoughts?

Now that Action Skill Damage rolls, Plus Ultra, Flare, hardpoint annointments are a thing, and the 4th skill tree is out, what’s your opinoins on IB scaling and viability in Mahyem 11?

Should IB continue to scale the way it does now that we have more options when it comes to building for bear?

Rocketeer Moze were already a hot topic in the past, and with all the things added since then, i’d like to hear what you think of it now. And also:

Skag den / big surplus - is there really no better way to add damage to on foot Moze than scaling these two skills with Mayhem levels?

Bears been in a good spot for a while in my opinion; if cub had less of a kamikaze sort of attitude that would be great

There should be many ways to add damage without them; simply changing some of our plethora of “weapon damage” for some other multiplier would be an amazing start - would also keep things from bogging down when 1 inevitably crosses fire immune enemies

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After giving it a lot of thought, I think I’m going to abstain from the Iron Bear discussion points because 1.) I am rather conflicted, and 2.) I don’t have a very strong opinion on the matter either way.

But I do want to at least address this:

I truly hate this more and more each day. What I really, really hate about it is that only 3 of Moze’s damage skills get this insane scaling: Skag Den, Big Surplus, and Short Fuse. Moze has 7 skills that offer damage in her Red Tree alone, and none of them get scaling as far as I know. Why is all of this free damage being handed out to a tiny fraction of her skills while others get nothing? Wasn’t Moze’s Blue Tree already the meta before scaling was added to Skag Den and Short Fuse? I hear a lot of talk about “build variety” but the last time I checked having 3 skills be completely ridiculously broken while others are only decent is not a good way to cultivate diversity among builds. Skills should have been scaled by smaller amounts, but if distributed more broadly across her skills she could still be the same power she is now. I think they really screwed up with this.

And on a more basic game-design philosophy level I prefer it when a game operates under the premise of “big investment = big reward.” For example I like really powerful capstones because players need to invest their points to get so deep into the tree to unlock them. And if you are smart and pick the right skills and gear combinations your rewards become absolutely massive. But here we have a case of “put 8 points into Skag Den and Big Surplus and you’ll be rewarded with +654,320% bonus damage.” It’s just silly to me.

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Same, and when you ignore those 3 it really shows how little SoR does for you for what you’re giving up in return. It’s not balanced for 10.000% enemy scaling in mind, unlike zane’s new tree is. Zane’s new tree might not be perfect, but atleast it feels great without the need of extra scaling from mayhem.

Yeah, absolutely. Maybe add some boosts to lower Red / Green - or something. Scaling FitsD / Surplus can’t be the only solution.

A swap to a plain “damage” multiplier (v1/v2) - even of it had “while enemies are suffering a status effect they take 15% more damage”(per effect would be stellar but i wont beg)

It’s just that in my opinion; the only things that should scale with mayhem are action skills and melee; since weapons and grenades are already scaled to the M-level, the characters skills should be enough in themselves to make up the difference

  • not some sticker like SD or BS to hide an inability to balance characters
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Iron Bear’s scaling is fine, imo. His issues, at the moment, are self-damage and some of his weapons using too much fuel for what they do (the chain fist, irc).
Moze is the one with problematic scaling. As others have said, it’s limiting for the character to have scaling only in DW (and purple if you Arms Race).

Some of Iron Bear’s skills do end up applying twice according to the grape vine, so fix that and you have a modest reduction in Bear’s damage. Granted, now that we have the Iron Bear anointments it’ll still cut through the game like a chainsaw though butter, but the chainsaw’s teeth will be a bit duller.

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Iron Bear was always going to be something of an enigma from a design perspective no matter what. I still remember what it was like to pilot Bear pre-Mayhem scaling and am absolutely certain that we should never revisit those days under any circumstances! What we have now is far better than back then when getting Bear to do work beyond Mayhem 5/6 was a real struggle.

Having said that, Bear’s DPS potential with Mayhem-scaling was already absurd before they spoon-fed him like an oversized toddler with his own hardpoint anointments. For me, Iron Bear is the true Moze meta ever since Mayhem-scaling was a thing, and the hardpoint anointments consolidated that even further. You don’t even need to farm or grind for weapons; you can just invest in the skills that work for Bear, buy a basic anointed gun from a vendor that boosts the hardpoints you roll with and you can speed-run both of the true takedowns with minimal effort.

I am of the view that Bear should be turned down a notch or two (but not too much) and that could be remedied somewhat by simply disabling a few of his DPS skills from applying twice. However, I can’t help but feel that it’s one of a few indicators that the whole game is going in such a crazy direction right now, when Amara is still the reigning queen by a country mile and now Zane has a new skill that can supposedly do what, up to +2,000% gun damage? I’ve not tried out his new kit yet to be honest. Add in what seems like Gearbox not being bothered to make a genuine effort when it comes to Moze’s skill trees, it’s why I rarely play anymore.

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