Finally picked up TPS after hundreds of hours in BL2: Who to play as?

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel BL:TPS Discussion
#1

I think the title says it all. I’ve spent a ton of time in BL2 and loved Zer0 and Maya, though I think I prefer Maya, honestly. I can’t really think of who I’d like to play as in TPS, though. I’ve started a file as Athena but her Action skill just doesn’t seem as cool to me as I’d like it to be - maybe I’m just not understanding it.

I’m leaning towards starting either Whilhelm or Nisha (because I can’t stand Clappy and I don’t have the DLC), are either of those comparable in any way to a BL2 character?

Thanks in advance, and I’m sorry if this isn’t where this thread belongs.

#2

Athena’s shield is more meant for tanking. Much of her damage comes from Maelstrom and Tear, but the shield can be a good supplement to your damage. If you don’t care for the shield, I originally built her without any points in the shield tree, so you can do that.

Nisha is my main, and she is more of a kill-everything-without-care kind of character. If you ignore the Law and Order tree, she is a glass cannon (like Zer0). With the L&O tree, she can tank quite a bit (not as much as Krieg or Axton, but a respectable amount) as well as have great damage increases. Tombstone can make literally anything (body shots, rockets, grenades, slams, barrels, ect.) into a critical hit. She can also dual wield pistols if that’s your thing.

Wilhelm is more of the Roland/Axton-type soldier character. His drones are his turret of sorts. Wolf is the offensive agro draw while Saint is the defensive drone that keeps your health and shields up (and regenerate ammo if you have Overcharge). Aside from that, Wilhelm has great tanking abilities as well as a fondness for Lasers and (in my build) Shotguns.

I can’t tell you what you will like more since the TPS characters don’t really play like the BL2 characters, so use what I’ve typed to try and figure out which best suits you.

#3

‘That one hurt a little.’

I’d say go for Nisha.

Far closer towards what you’re used to than Wilhelm.

@Acnaero Summed it up nicely.

#4

What can I say, he’s a very polarizing character. I’m much more interested in the gameplay and mechanics of the games then the writing/story, and he’s a fairly good example of the things I don’t like about the series.

Based on the post above yours, I did indeed optto start a Nisha playthrough. I’m trying to go into this game with an open mind, after hearing so much criticism I’ve recently heard some praises (from some of @Derch’s videos) that made me pick up a copy of the game today. I’m hoping I’ll like it.

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#5

I was actually quoting him.

#6

I know, isn’t that one of his lines in Sanctuary? Was just assuming you were also expressing the same sentiment and I was explaining why I don’t care for him too much.

#7

I personally like him, but as he is meant to get on peoples nerves, I can see why people get annoyed by him. I doubt you’d want to listen to hours of his dialogues.

#8

I know you don’t have the DLC but I found Aurelia to be a lot like Maya in many ways. Otherwise Nisha is my pick for you. The rest did nothing for me.

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#9

Yeah, honestly Her and Jack are the two that I’m the most interested in. Wish the practice of DLC characters didn’t exist but… oh well.

Nisha is alright, but I don’t really care for this aimbot style of play. Stuck on Deadlift and not loving it. I expect it’ll be like BL2 was for me - hated it at first, came back after a couple months and really enjoyed it. I might pick up a DLC character in a couple days but that’s not a practice I really want to support, especially for a game that I haven’t started to enjoy yet. Thanks for the help, everyone… just popped BL2 back in the PS3.

#10

Athena is the absolute best in the whole series for me. So I suggest you don’t play with her first if you want to try the other VHs without feeling down. They’re good, some are great, but she’s godly.

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#11

Athena is so amazing definitely go for her first. But at the same time all 6 vault hunters in the pre seqeul are ao damn amazing. So my picks would be athena, aerilia, jack, nisha.

#12

Jack and Lady Hammerlock are great yeah.

Wilhelm is a decent choice. He can’t steamroll the game for you. And the game is easier than BL2 (but in a good way), mostly because most of the characters have fantastic ways of dealing with tons of damage. Nisha and Jack and steamroll most of the content. Lady Hammerlock can steamroll a lot of the content. Wilhelm, from my experience, is more neutral. Not an extreme damage dealer and not an extreme tank. But he certainly seems to have his ways of staying alive. He’s effectively the second to last character that I’m playing to level 50+. Claptrap is still around level 32 or something. I have Jack at 70. Lady Hammerlock at 63. Nisha and Athena around 53. Wilhelm is around 42.

As for deadlift, do all the other missions available to you first. One of them gives you a shock based sniper which will help you a lot. He’s the most unusual/un-typical boss in the game. Don’t let that experience stop you. It’s worth fighting past him.

I’ll play more claptrap later I think. I don’t like the idea of my action skill being random. In that way he can be the most challenging class. Athena is great at soaking up damage in front of you, getting close, meleeing, shotgunning, backing out and distance fighting again. Or if you use the shock tree, she’s like a live tesla coil running around.

#13

Wilhelm is like Axton in many ways…fairly straight forward action skill, no gimmicks, a bit underpowered compared to the other charecters, pretty good defensively. Definitely a challenge…you can get it done efficiently but you have to be smart and use terrain and tactics. Builds are incredibly important. He is a careful player’s character.

Nisha is much like Sal…Kills everything, wonderful Action Skill, less of a challenge. Always great to have a Nisha in your party. The firepower…just wow!

Hope this helps.

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#14

This is something I needed to hear. I’ll definitely be taking this advice. I feel bad for getting discouraged so easy, but that’s how I am with games. When I first got BL2 I made it to Flynt as Sal and hated it and gave up for months. I returned as Zer0 and loved it! I’m assuming much the same will happen here. I like the idea of doing the side missions first, doesn’t really make sense for me to take on a boss more or less immediately before really learning the new mechanics of the game, especially in a fight that uses them so heavily. My next day off, I promise I’ll at least get past the Deadlift fight :stuck_out_tongue:

It does, thank you. Solidified my theory that Wilhelm is probably not the character for me and that while Nisha probably isn’t either, that I’ll at least be able to give the game a fair chance as her. I don’t want the game handed to me, but what makes me love the series is the gimmicks/RPG elements of the characters. I’m not much for the FPS genre, so playing a more straightforward character doesn’t really interest me. The only other shooter I ever got into was Bioshock (and only the first one at that), and that’s also a game full of special abilities.

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#15

You know, I actually really like Wilhelm for at least until like level 40. I know he fits a certain playstyle but he’s actually really powerful if his skill points are allocated correctly.

I read something on the forums that I think describes Wilhelm well. Wilhelm, Wolf, and Saint have a symbiotic relationship.

See Wilhelm isn’t just a pet class. He’s designed to do good gun damage and Wolf is designed to do damage in addition to Wilhelm’s gun. If you acquire the Rolling Thunder skills, Wolf Damage gets a huge buff.

I’m not very big into Saint’s tree but if you want to go pure pet class, his healing aura skill is pretty nice actually.

I love his Cyborg Augmentations. Paired with a fully specced Hunter Killer tree, Wilhelm can be a destructive beast. His final Skill in the Cyborg tree lets him shoot rockets whenever he puts his scope on a target. For flying targets, this tree does some pretty amazing things. This tree also makes you more of a run-n-gun class.

Now I know you’re not very interested in Wilhelm but anyone who may be in your position can read this thread and listen to Wilhelm’s story. Also bonus: The things he says during the game is pretty funny.

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#16

Thank you, someone who gets it.

I’ve seen it said way too often that Wolf does everything for you. That isn’t a good way to think about any pet class. Whether it’s Wilhelm, Jack, Gaige, Axton, or Mord (and Roland I guess) you always want to work in conjunction with your pet, not sit back and let it kill everything while you AFK.

A pet is part of your DPS equation, but you still have to throw in a few numbers yourself to make it truly shine.

To answer your question OP, based on what you said, you would really enjoy Aurelia (so long as you played gun Zero and not melee). She has the crowd control of Maya, with some of the juicy damage buffs of Zero. She won’t do as much damage as Zero could, but she makes up for it with more health regen skills and freezing abilities.

If you find Aurelia too squishy for you, Jack also has great survivability, crowd control, and damage. There was a sniper spec for him on the old forums, but I can’t find it now. But if you want to take a more careful approach to Jack as opposed to quad spamming, there is that.

If you really don’t want the DLC characters, the closest you’ll get to what you want is Athena. She has melee and gun play aspects, although both are radically different from Zero. Athena’s melee is more of a debuff than a damage dealer, although it can kill if you really build around it. Her epicenter skill is no converge, but it’s decent for grouping up mobs, rend functions kinda similarly to slag (although she can’t apply it as effectively as Maya could slag), and she has a whole bunch of group heals as well. If you like the tankiness that Maya brought to the table, Athena may fit your fancy. If you like Maya’s CC or Zero’s melee, you may want to look elsewhere.

Lastly, about Athena’s action skill, you can either build it to be a purely defensive item or a weapon. If you find waiting behind the shield boring, skip the extra points in HTL and just toss the thing as soon as it’s charged up. Or if you were doing that, try the opposite. A change in approach may change your perspective.

TL;DR- If you decide you want the DLC characters, go with Aurelia-> Jack-> Athena. If you find her action skill boring, try using it in a different way.

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#17

I’m primarily an Axton & Maya player in BL2, and have all 4 core classes into OP levels. My play style is typically a methodical, problem solver approach. I like midrange and long range weapons and ways to manage space.

In TPS, I’ve found that enemies seem to swarm from multiple directions in more places, so I’m less able to begin the fight from a distance and maintain space than I am in BL2. I thought Aurelia or Wilhelm would be my favorite, but I am almost exclusively a Jack player.

Jack gives me space management tools, the ability to work with any gun, great survivability, great speed, etc. He’s basically perfect.

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#18

Nisha or athena.
I found wilhelm to be disappointing as a hardcore axton user.
Still do.
He’s not 100% fit for flakker use.

#19

athena is OP in any build, but especially maelstrom. rapid fire, infinite ammo, even more massive damage? whats not to like? the only reason that she isnt the undeniable strongest character, is nisha.

claptrap is confusing at first, but devastating one you get a certain skill. unbalanced? yes. fun? Unless you get rubber ducky, yes.

wilhelm has lots of tank, and while he can hold his own against enemys, he is nowhere near the others in terms of damage.

Nisha is in early game a glass cannon, and in late game a “fictionalmetallighterandstrongerthantitanium” death robot that rapid-fires homing nukes. if theres an enemy that lasts more than a second against nisha, its a raid boss. this is NOT exaggeration.

jack has huge critical hits, is almost indestructable, and massive chance to not use ammo. after the game-breaking overkill that is nisha and athena, jack is the one i find most fun. (allthough a certain specific type of weapon can buff him up to nisha level instant massive damage)

auralia is really, really accurate, but doesnt need to be, owing to everything basically dying from her sheer prescence. aurelia gets the award for most balanced character, unless you are insanely good with a sniper. she also is terrible at beating the sentinel

#20

Did I mention that sometimes you can find a shield in the vending machines before Deadlift that is shock resistant/proof? That’s also very useful against deadlift.

Yea, the side missions before him help you with some air control and of course, giving you a shock based weapon. But deadlift is still a pain early in the game but manageable once you figure out all the things to make it easier. A slightly odd choice of difficulty that early on. There are also some decent places on the map that allow you to attack him and then hide. Patience is also useful.

And like I said before, there really isn’t a boss later that does anything like Deadlift. Jumppads all over, player seeking shock orbs, and shocking the whole floor. Some bosses will make you think about vertical space more than usual. Others might mess with the floor (but actually in a more tolerable way). But the jump pad thing especially, nothing like that later. Actually reminds me of Quake 3.

Flynt in BL2 was a bit of a jerk too. Kinda broke a little too many rules for new players. But deadlift is definitely more annoying.

Tangent:
I do know what you mean about games in general. Sometimes I can get soured on a game pretty quick. I tried sleeping dogs the other month and I insta quit the moment I realized a) the game had a melee combo system, and b) doing those a certain way was required to proceed past the tutorial/intro missions. Bye game, go to the digital recycle bin.

The batman arkham games have it too but it’s way more flexible and didn’t stop my progress so I like those. But in other games I just find that I hate button string combos. It always seems artificial to me. It’s why I stopped playing stuff like street fighter and mortal kombat. As a player I’d rather string together the moves and buttons or select a power and then use it. My skill should be from choosing what and when to use rather than hitting X, X, X, Y, Down, Down + Y precisely. Multi hit combos should result from me managing to land hits than memorizing strings of buttons. However, things like, if when you’re running and you hit crouch, you slide. Cool. If you shoot while sliding, he shoots. Great. That’s natural. Hitting left bumper to do one thing, Right bumper to do something else OR hitting both at once to do something else entirely, also fine.