Mana Well: theorycrafting a use case

Borderlands 3 Loot and Weapons
#1

I’m working out effective use cases for the new Mana Well shield. 70% damage reduction is a lot, but not necessarily great by itself (and it’s only good for like ten seconds). The bonus shock damage also lasts only during this window, so I’m looking at this through two lenses:

  1. Can we add 30% or more damage reduction through other means to be actually invincible for this ten second window?

  2. Can we extend this window with shield regeneration? Like if the shield never actually runs out because you’re backfeeding it somehow, will the damage reduction and shock damage stay active longer? Remember that we also have to overcome the normal incoming shield damage from combat.

  • Amara with Helping Hands (40% damage reduction after an action skill fires). This could put her over 100% damage reduction in this case, and I’m not sure what would happen there. If incoming damage restored her shield, it gets weird. She’s also got the Stone COM, that could push this way higher. I don’t think she’s got any shield-restoring skills that could compete with a 9% decay.

  • FL4K and Fuzzy Math (restores 3% shield per point whenever you crit). Five points in this skill gives 15% shield return per crit, so if you can semi-reliably nail these crits, you may outpace the shield drain. Five points in Keep them Safe will restore 50% of your shields if you fire an Action Skill at any point where your shield is below 50%; if you throw Rakk Attack when you get right below the halfway mark, you almost restore your shield to full.

  • Zane and Calm Cool Collected: if he freezes someone, will the recharge rate overcome the discharge rate? I suppose that depends on the shield, but Ready for Action adds 30% to the recharge rate, so some shields may work with this? Also, Stiff Upper Lip would enhance his damage reduction during this time.

  • Moze and Full Can of Whoop Ass: this would be used with Iron Cub, but would deploying Iron Cub right before you ran out of shield build your shield back? Does Tenacious Defense give you an extra free four seconds? Does Phalanx Doctrine make this worse (since buffing the max shield without actually filling it would make the decay rate against the remaining shield value higher)? Force Feedback? Armored Infantry? Vladof Ingenuity? Behind the Iron Curtain? Moze may be able to overcome the shield decay with her passives here. A Bloodletter build with a Leech? (I know y’all aren’t using that, but she is nigh invincible with it).

This topic is not about other gear that may be better or any other random rants about the game: it’s only for figuring out how to get the most out of this shield, even if it turns out that this shield is largely useless.

Off to the lab for some field research!

edit - ■■■■ yeah, Moze can keep that up indefinitely with my Bloodletter/Leech build, which makes me think those other shield-rebuilding methods will work. :metal:

2nd edit - actual research findings:

  • Moze’s Tenacious Defense does not extend the Mana Well effect: the effect ends, and then the recharge triggers. It’s nice, because if you let it run all the way out, you’re not totally screwed.

  • Moze has a Shield Maiden COM that grants 25% damage reduction (and this nets me 7 points in Armored Infantry for 17% more). Between this and the Mana Well 70%, I’m at 112% damage reduction. I didn’t see any shield returns on damage, but attacks also did not seem to drop the shield rate any faster than normal, so I think it just hits some maximum. I don’t think we’ll see over-invincibility with damage reduction rates over 100%, but it does preserve the minimum ten-second timer for the Mana Well effect, which makes it easier to restore it with other skills.Self damage is either ignored or still so high that it’s hard to dodge though. Even with this 100%+ damage reduction, self damage is still brutal. A launcher shot to the feet won’t immediately kill you if you’ve got a decent amount of shield left and you don’t pick up DoT (where without the damage reduction, it’s an instant FFYL). If you’re using Fire in the Skag Den (and who isn’t?), it’s a real dice roll: you’ll survive the splash damage, but if FitS fires, you’re toast anyway.

  • Moze’s Force Feedback skill does add 10% on critical kill, and I’m sure the shield recharge triggers, but the drain resets that immediately, so you just see a brief blip in the shield decay rate.

  • (I have an RGB keyboard, and I never noticed before that the top row of function keys are in blue, and show my shield level; while the Mana Well is draining it, they turn red as it drops. Weird.)

  • A Moxxi weapon (a Creamer in this case) with a Bloodletter will basically reset your shield loss entirely.

  • Rushin’ Offense with a Bloodletter can overcome the shield drain (as long as you’re sprinting and you’ve got enough outgoing damage). Watch for enemies with cryo weapons though.

  • Redistribution doesn’t seem to add enough healing to a Bloodletter to overcome the decay at a worthwhile rate (the 2.5% return is less than the 9% decay).

  • Zane’s Calm, Cool, Collected does not seem to mitigate the shield decay… I think (for shields), it just instantly triggers the recharge, which is then instantly overcome by the standing decay rate. Plus, like most of us, I’m more interested in using CCC to reset my Action Skills; activating this shield drain kind of wastes any CCC triggers, since they will apply to failed attempts to fill the shield.

  • FL4K’s Fuzzy Math totally overcomes it, but of course you need to be throwing enough crits. The damage reduction also works against the self-damage from those COV self-igniting ARs. The shield starts decaying slightly faster (which is still better than almost instant FFYL), which gives you enough time to swap weapons or crit your way through the pain.

  • FL4K’s Keep Them Safe overcomes it, but it doesn’t appear to work as advertised: it doesn’t restore shield on the issuance of an Attack Command; it’s restored when the summoned attack hits. Even with a kill and Eager to Impress instantly resetting your ability to throw an Attack Command, the 12-second cooldown on Keep Them Safe guarantees that you only get to fire this once per Mana Well activation. However, this is with Keep Them Safe as the only shield refiller - if you have Fuzzy Math to keep your shield up, Keep Them Safe can be re-triggered if you otherwise like that skill.

  • Amara… doesn’t seem to have any serious shield-enhancement skills. She’s got tons of damage reduction options between skills and COMs, but with the Mana Well, all they do is make sure the shield drain doesn’t go any faster than its minimum. I’m open to suggestions here.

  • Moze with Full Can of Whoop Ass (and Iron Cub): you basically get one shot with this, because even equipping Iron Cub with a suicide loadout, the time needed to self-destruct and then respawn is longer than the Mana Well drain, even with this skill backfeeding the shield (it’ll basically move the needle back for a third or so of the shield bar).

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#2

I haven’t gotten a Mana Well yet myself to try it, but could you do a Bloodletter Moze with a Deathless artifact to further increase your shield capacity? Then pair it with Urad gear as well? That might be kinda suicidal but entertaining possibly. Or the Lunacy relic could actually have some use for this as well, I haven’t ever found any great use for that artifact yet.

#3

Mana Well seems to base it’s shield drain rate on your total equipped shield capacity. So wearing a Deathless wont extend the time at all but just increases how much drains per sec/tick.

Moze and Bloodletter works well. With +hp regen on relic and COM you would have just under 2k regen per second which would offset mana well drain on shield capacity up to ~22k.

Could always claim a mana well with a new lvl 13 character and throw a point or 2 into Thin Red Line. Then Vampyr with a CMT should provide enough healing to keep shield from draining fully. The 70% dmg reduction plus Armored Infantry lets you get by with a much lower shield capacity for Bloodletter Moze than normal so 20k shield cap actually holds up pretty well for most things outside of Takedowns.

#4

Yeah, the drain seems to be percent based. Still, a Bloodletter (with a Deathless, Lunacy, or whatever) will allow Moze to extend it for long periods of time with healing from her various skills (Rushn’ Offensive, Redistribution, Vampyr, Full Can of Whoop Ass (if you’ve got Iron Cub ready to deploy), Biofuel, and some health regen from any other sources (anointments, Moxxi weapons, passives, whatever). A Deathless does cause the game to throw a ton of health vials that work against the standing shield drain too.

2 Likes
#5

I’m most familiar with Zane, so I’ll just list what I’ve found with him so far.

Ready For Action and Hearty Stock are basically DOA, as the extra capacity doesn’t slow the drain, and the shorter delay/faster recharge is cancelled out by the continuous drain. Trying to get to CCC isn’t even worth the points.

The Clone at least offers Schadenfreude, which I haven’t tested, but should work, as it doesn’t trigger the shield refilling itself, but instead replenishes it in chunks as the Clone takes damage. If you want to use the Mana Well for yourself, you’re best off giving the Clone an Initiative (-13% Damage taken, +50% Health), Plus Ultra (+100% Health), Rough Rider (-23% Damage taken, +35% Health), or Mendel’s Multivitamin (+50% Max Health), so that it can tank more hits, giving you more shield back more often.

The SNTNL has some interesting options. Static Field/Drone Delivery with x2 Generator Tran-Fusion grenade? The only problem is enemies without shields of their own, as Static Field/Generator grenades don’t replenish shield from Armor/Health damage.

Might be able to try dropping the Barrier with Distributed Denial and a Big Boom Blaster, then switch to Mana Well to harvest the boosters, but I can’t remember if the Barrier w/DD will keep the effects of the shield you had on when you activated the action skill, or if it changes when you change your shield, even if the Barrier is already deployed. Might be worth a test.

1 Like
#6

Blasphemy! :laughing:

Can you give the Clone a different shield? I thought it picked up whatever you had on, even if you switched. Is it like Deathtrap’s Sharing is Caring, where the summon only gets whatever shield you have at the moment it’s called?

Oh man, does this go for the Barrier too? Some of my builds involve exactly this: giving the Barrier some heavy booster thing (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, something with triple booster passives, All In, MSCR Dispensary).

BRB

edit - it does, that’s fun!

#7

Tbf, in this case I meant it “isn’t even worth the points to get to CCC, with the intent of it being useful to a Mana Well build”.

CCC can definitely be worth it with Barrier builds, or now just the Super Soldier tbh.:sweat_smile:

#8

It says a 70% reduction but it is actually 90% according to the BL3 build gurus. I’ve been using a triple-recharge Mana Well on a hybrid of the Remote Ranger/Messy MNTIS builds in the build doc to good effect with Static Field, Schadenfreude, and Quick Breather to maintain uptime, and then when the shield goes down I use those same skills along with Shield Reboot to quickly top the shield off and repeat the cycle.

1 Like
#9

90% wow. Is it overall damage resistance to all types and elements? Curious how that stacks or interacts with other forms of damage reduction or resistance i.e. does it have diminishing returns or is this some new special type of damage reduction.

#10

My first one came with no passives (and obviously no anointment)… next few keys are going here.

#11

I think it’s just a flat 90% reduction in damage.

1 Like
#12

Not sure if viable but with Moze you could go Mana Well, Bloodletter, Heartbreaker.
As Mana Well is gonna drain shield, Heartbreaker is a life steal shotgun with 8 or 16 pellets, Bloodletter puts life steal into shield.
Its a case of do you go Pearl for damage therefore more healing or do you go Deathless for more capacity.

#13

Pearl it is!