Are status effects broken? 100% death sentence at L40

Borderlands 3 Amara the Siren
#1

First run through as Amara. Red tree build.

At ~40, or thereabouts, I’ve hit a wall that I can do nothing about. Any status effect applied to the player never wears off, and is always lethal.

So I can kill a few bandits, clear out a complete room or area, then notice my shields ticking down, then notice my health ticking down, then die (because there’s nothing alive to shoot at).

The frustrating thing is it never happened at lower levels. I’m actually thinking that Amara’s skills/perks, like the one that makes status effects last 2x as long, are applying to status effect ON Amara.

Is that the way these perks work? Is it a double-edged sword? Do the bandits status effects get the bonuses from Amara’s elemental tree?

I can’t explain it otherwise. Earlier in the game status effects would last a couple seconds and would often not even put a dent in your shields.

At level 41 now, ever status effect on Amara is a death sentence. It’s so frustrating to konw that she’s going to die (in about 10 seconds) and be able to do nothing about it.

Why is this happening? A lot of the time it’s fire or acid status effects. At level 40 it doesn’t seem to matter what element it is. They appear to burn through shields as if they were electric, then burn through health as if they were fire.

My Amara has the health regen perks and even they can’t do jack about the status effects.

It seems to be really, really overpowered against the player. She has a legendary shield even with +Fire resist. It makes no difference at all.

There is nothing more frustrating in this game than all the enemies being long dead, and just waiting to die from a status effect.

I have to say, BL2 was a great game, BL3 is not nearly as fun. I’ve stopped playing it now due to this status effect problem in every… single… encounter.

Why even bother having shields if any status effect rips right through them. You may as well just say the player is cursed and will die in ~10 seconds, and (“haha”) you can’t do jack about it. It completely spoils the game.

Sorry for this rant but I can’t continue playing this game because of this issue. Every status effect is a death sentence and it just makes me too angry to continue. I feel there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.

#2

Moved you to the Amara section.

Are you playing with Mayhem enabled? If so, what level and what modifiers? It might also be helpful to know exactly what shield, class mod, and relic you are running, as some of them do make interesting trade-offs.

#3

Hi. This is a normal (first-time) play-through so I’m not running any build, just picking up and using equip as the game hands it to me, replacing it often.

The more I play the more certain I am that, when this happens, it’s my own damage bonuses and perks being applied against me. I just don’t know why or how.

I’ve seen bullets get reflected back by spider ants, and then you can get crazy status effects on yourself and die real quick. But it’s not just spider ants.

Against other, non-deflecting enemies I’m still having issues. Maliwan guns have AoE and I can see how they’d damage me in close range use.

However other guns (with status damage) shouldn’t be AoE? I have one of the Legendary CoV fire-based assault rifles, and I’ve seen that set myself on fire (how?).

And then I’m pretty sure the problem is that the perks I have to add random status effects, extend duration, double damage… they all apply against myself in these situations.

I’d just love to know how and why a random, non AoE fire gun can start “backfiring” so as to start killing the player. There must be a reason, but I can’t figure it out.

With ricochet I’ve seen friendly vehicles be targeted and take damage (happens all the time). But I’m not sure it’s that. I also have the perk to let status effects spread, but the text for that says it spreads to nearby enemies, not yourself.

So I’m really at a loss as to why so many encounters are ending in a slow, painful death watching shields and health tick down to zero. I’ve tried to figure it out, but I just don’t get it.

#4

its the legendary cov ar, the special effect of it burns you to death

because krieg reference

edit: and yes because you apply it to yourself, it gets the bonus from Anima

1 Like
#5

What @TheNeku said about the assault rifle assuming it’s Embrace the Pain.

Beyond that, never spec Anima as it will kill you.
There is a similar problem with Catharsis further down the same tree which is likely to activate barrels, puddles and other sources of ongoing DOTs which due to their scaling nature will also kill you while dealing next to no damage to enemies.
Since they count as self-damage if you interacted with them in any way (like with Catharsis, a single pellet or bit of splash from a weapon or any of 200 other skill or item effects) they’ll ignore healthgate and get the benefit from your own bonuses to splash damage, elemental damage, the radius and/or duration of said damage types etc. etc.

It’s unfortunate that GBX didn’t think this through any better but it’s what we got.
Just wait till you play Moze :acmsad:

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#6

Well that’ll teach me not to use the wiki. I was just playing the game and not using spoilers. It’s “Pain is Power” that I have, btw. But now I see that one directly sets you on fire, lol. Should have guessed, shouldn’t I, from the flavour text. Doh.

As for Anima, I basically built my Amara around it! Haha. Oh well. Could you please do me a favour and explain under what circumstances Anima will kill me? Is is just the barrels? I know already reflected bullets will kill me with Anima. AFAIK only the spider ants reflect bullets?

Now I’m going to have to Google all the flavour text for the unique weapons I have :stuck_out_tongue: Shame they didn’t include the precise details in-game, esp when some of them are self-harming, haha.

Ta for the replies so far.

#7

Welcome to the forums. It took a long time before I found a recipe that let me use those self-immolating COV assault rifles (there are like three different ones) comfortably. If you have questions about red flavor text gear behavior, this is perhaps one of the best places to ask.

Since BL2 anyway, Gearbox hasn’t really ever gone into depth about game mechanics outside of a few (frankly very good and I wish they still did them) “Inside the Box” articles. The research levels done by players and other, eh, “explorers” has been seriously impressive, and without that body of knowledge, I really don’t think the game would be as successful as it is (primarily for discovering entertaining metas and, as in this case, why some random things are absurdly lethal).

#8

WRT Anima, some of what I mentioned above for Catharsis applies as well, and some would claim that Conflux can be nearly as dangerous.

Sadly it seems that it’s not just reflected projectiles (from Spiderants, Anointed enemies and certain others) but ricocheting projectiles from your own Indiscriminate skill that have a high chance of applying a dangerous and sometimes fatal DOT on you.

Of the skills mentioned, only Indiscriminate is worth the points for most builds on higher levels IMO so it may be worth getting into the habit of avoiding the others.

Apart from reflection, ricochets, barrels, water, elemental sludge from vents or enemy attacks, enemy units in close range (or just leaping 15 meters and into your face) etc. etc. there are other triggers which are more difficult to identify and test for.
“What even hit me?” is my unofficial motto for this game - it’s quite possible that assets with active hurtboxes and effects that haven’t even had their model loaded in yet are still in range of skills and effects with an exaggerated radius.
That’s guesswork, mind you.

I haven’t played BL3 nearly as much as previous titles so I don’t have chapter and verse for this stuff, but it’s worth noting that splash damage has always been an absolute mess in the Borderlands, with every type and source of splash being riddled with inconsistencies and numbers that don’t add up.
(Check Demonite’s videos and posts for a summary of how they worked and failed to work sensibly in previous titles.)

With numerous skills applying to them and then having their effects amplified by Mayhem scaling and sometimes double-dipping into elemental modifiers for gear and then being subjected to the general spaghetti math of BL3…you can see where that goes.

I’m afraid it’s just best to identify the most dangerous of the known triggers and hoping the others don’t catch you too often.

#9

Short story short status effects are like barrels: their damage is indeed augmented by VH skills, which can easily result in death sentence.

#10

I did wonder if Ricochet was working correctly. I’ve seen rebounding projectiles heading my way for no apparent reason.

Well, I’m glad to see it’s not just me. “What the heck did I do wrong? / What does this game want from me?” has been my motto since about level ~40, and putting points into certain skills. The ricochet one, the one that applies random status effect.

I did strongly suspect that those skills were at least partly responsible, since (other than my level and the mob level) nothing else had changed. Before 40 I was coasting, after 40 I was eating random deaths all the time.

Although it’s less frequent now I’m not setting myself on fire with that silly Krieg gun, haha.

Cheers again for the advice and help, all.

e: Got a higher level Transformer shield last night, proceeded to deliberate splash myself with AoE electric damage… big mistake :stuck_out_tongue: The random status effect proc’d, and my shields just dropped like a stone.

So one thing I’m guessing is that when the random status effect occurs, the result isn’t “Fire status & Electric status”, which would largely do nothing, because fire on shields is pretty low damage.

Instead it seems to be “Fire & Electric status” - ie some hybrid status neither one nor the other - which just ripped through the shield and almost killed me.

#11

Fire and shock should be separate instances of DOT, most likely the fire was enough.

(If there were such a thing as hybrid status then Bog help us, the spaghetti would be so dense and convoluted it might become self-aware and probably usurp humanity and bring about the reign of our robotic overlords. Which would be kinda cool but probably isn’t the best idea.)

#12

My Amara’s survivability went way up after I realized Anima was killing her and specced out of it. Lots of “okay WTF just killed me” moments and I finally wised up heh.