BL3 without anointments

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 General Discussion
#1

I wanted to see what the big difference is when you play with and without anointments. So, I took all the gear I typically use and removed the anointments… Then played a little bit to see what would happen. All that really changes is how long it takes to kill things.

In my opinion, BL2 would have been better (end game) with anointments. I recently played some BL2 and was leveling up a VH… I am around 75 with Maya and things just take a ridiculous amount of time to kill compared to BL3. There is no added challenge to it, just added time. Anointments would have eliminated the need for the Grog Nozzle or any other type of constant healing to keep your health gate up. Anointments may seem unpopular to many players, but they are the best thing to happen to Borderlands besides mantling and sliding.

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#2

To me anoints took gun prefix’s to the next level. Now i farm for an anoint instead of say a consummate or light prefix. Which is different but the same lol. They went more specific to vh’s which clutters drops up.

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#3

Hmmm yep, you’re right. I’ve spent tons of time in BL2 farming for matching grips, etc. Farming for an anoint actually isn’t all that different really. I never looked at it quite like that before, thanks lol. :smiley:

Kinda odd that in BL2, I was a total parts nerd (and somewhat less so in BL1) but in BL3, I don’t pay much attention to parts at all except for the anoint heh.

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#4

Same here. In 2 i knew what parts to look for but in 1 just the prefix, there wasnt many in it so that was easy. In 1 tho i thought it was cool some badass’s in Knoxx’s dlc used some pearls against you and dropped them! Ahh good times. Sorry a little off topic.

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#5

Farming for parts in BL2 vs. farming for anointments in BL3 are similar, but different, IMO.

The similarity between anointment vs. part farming, in my mind, is simply the farming part. That is, it’s a question of what you are farming.

Weapon parts and anointments are not functionally the same though, because whereas a Pimpernel is a Pimpernel is a Pimpernel (one set of parts and prefixes may perform slightly better than the other), a Wedding Invitation with a N2M anoint is much different than a Wedding Invitation with the 50% damage under 25% health anoint. In other words, anointments are much, much more varied and powerful than weapon parts, so with limited exceptions in BL3, it is not as much worth farming weapon parts and you farm the anointment you need for your build instead.

There were some scenarios in BL2 or TPS where if you didn’t have the correct parts, the weapon/item was not really worth using, or at the very least the weapon/item was much, much less effective without the correct prefix. Good examples:

  1. Casual prefix on certain shotguns (Carnage, Swordsplosion, Butcher)

  2. The Flying prefix on a Sand Hawk

  3. Zero fuse time grenades

Weapon/item parts in BL2 were much less important overall than BL3’s anointments system IMO. If you are a min/maxer, then yes you will want those perfect parts in BL2, but it’s not like your build didn’t work without the correct weapon parts.

TLDR - Anointments literally can make or break a build in BL3, whereas in most cases in BL2 the specific weapon parts sought only made the weapon slightly better in terms of stats, but not completely unusable. This is the key difference I see between the two systems.

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#6

Of course that is the conclusion, and that’s the main issue with anointments, if they are absolutely necessary to be able to kill something, why have them as extra farming?

In all honesty, it is a videogame, there is not many ways to increase difficulty in a fair way if not by increasing numbers, the principle behind taking longer to kill equals to higher difficulty is that the longer you fight, the higher the chance for you to make mistakes. The other way to increase difficulty would be by making the enemy punish you more for a mistake, but that can get pretty frustrating in a FPS game.

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#7

But they aren’t necessary to kill something. I like anointments because they add to build diversity. I took my exact same build I always use and just removed the anointments. The only thing that changed was the amount of time it took to kill things… That’s it. It didn’t really change my strategy or gameplay all too much.

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#8

Wholeheartedly agreed on all fronts, but I just wanted to add that I see anointments as a sort of successor and attempt at improving on the idea of slag from bl2. Mostly because they are both conditions that need to be met to add (way too large) damage buffs to the player.

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#9

I’m using a 300/90 anointment on my clairvoyance…

So most of the time i’m not using an anointment :rofl:

Game needs to be balanced… Anoinments where needed back then, but then more level cap increases came, mayhem 2.0 came… And now they’re buffing random ■■■■ making balance even worse…

I just hoped they’d make the game challenging instead of this 1shot everything on highest difficulty

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#10

The idea of Anointments is fine. It’s the implementation and the methods (or lack there of) that are available to hunt for them that is the major issue. I like Anointments, just not the way GBX uses them. It’s a very sloppy and under developed idea in BL3.

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#11

was farming for parts in bl2 a pc only thing or also on console? I never really understood the concept (e.g. how would you know a pistol had a vladof barrell, torgue grip, etc.).

I’ve always felt anointments were overrated–nice, but not necessary to clear content–makes it easier but i don’t spend time looking for anything specific. Most of my gear, although anointed, is useless in terms of anointments (e.g., when playing as Zane I use mainly moze anointed gear or gear related to the barrier which I don’t use).

#12

@Bigredtarheel Farming for weapon parts in BL2 was definitely not just a PC thing, at least for those of us who were interested in min/maxing (I would categorize parts farming as mostly a min/maxer thing, but not solely that). I played 360 and Xbone and certainly would farm parts at max level, but I would never farm for weapons with specific parts until I hit OP8 with the character.

Farming for parts on PC is/was way easier, because load times of course, but definitely is a thing that is popular with a certain segment of the player base, and sometimes even for different reasons.

And as to how you know what the parts are in BL2? Just like with BL3, the community just figured it out over the years. Google “BL2 weapon parts” or “BL2 pistol parts” and you will find lots of educational material. With the repetition of playing for years or simply just investing a little bit of time into learning the parts, BL2 weapon parts are not hard to learn. To my knowledge, all of the weapon parts and prefixes have not been catalogued in BL3 yet, as there are just so many, they are manufacturer-specific, and the game has only been out a little more than a year.

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#13

I have dash quit farmed for good Pimpernels for HOURS on Xbox :sweat_smile:

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#14

If the reason you think this is because the time-to-kill is faster in BL3 I think you’re really giving commentary on the player damage-to-enemy-health-scaling ratio rather than anointments. Anointments are a factor in that but a game can have enemies that die quickly without anointments. In fact we had the opposite of that at one point (at the launch of Mayhem 2.0) where the time-to-kill was too long for many players and Gearbox adjusted it. All the while anointments were still in the game. So anointments don’t seem to be the cause of this, Gearbox just seems to be chasing a different endgame balance than in the past.

Would they? It seems like the anointments that get used in BL3 are damage anoints because they offer such a massive portion of damage potential to the player. I imagine they’d be used the same in BL2 (only speculation obviously).

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#15

Really obvious you’re a PC player. It’s easy to ignore the issues with anoints when you can just hack the game to add/remove or change them (removing the issues around farming and unsuitable anoints). As for them just making it quicker to kill stuff, that’s my main issue with them - only the damage buff anoints are worthwhile. There’s a bunch of (mostly) useless anoints that add utility effects, like accuracy, charge speed, movement speed, hp regeneration, which could be really good, but can’t be balanced against the damage buff anoints, cus their buff is too strong. Why would you pick an anoint that heals you a little, when there’s an option to deal 3x or 4x damage and kill enemies fast enough that healing is irrelevant?
The system is badly built, and they either need to balance it better by cutting the damage buff anoints and lowering enemies health, armour and shields (or don’t and make higher mayhem more challenging) OR remove the utility anoints so they’re not useless clutter. Hopefully the first, because some utility anoints have the potential to be really good, but can’t compare to massive damage boosts.
They also REALLY need to de-clutter the anointment pool. There’s a lot of them that can be combined together and some that serve no purpose at all. Most people wouldn’t mind the anointment system if it didn’t instantly make at least 90% of good loot worthless.

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#16

I hate math. I don’t like percentages.

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#17

I’d also point out that anoints wouldn’t have changed the overuse of the grog nozzle, for its life steal. The only reason BL3 players aren’t more focused on life steal weapons (like moxxi guns), is that there are life steal mechanics elsewhere in the game. Fl4k is the only vault hunter without a life steal skill in his skill trees, and he has the pet to draw agro and help out.
If BL2 had anoints, people would have used grog nozzles with anoints to heal faster. That’s all.

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#18

That’s not true… I don’t use life steal anointments at all. I play on PC because of the control. So if there are other, quicker ways to get gear, that’s not my fault… It’s just available and up to the user to use them or not. Sometimes I do… But most of the time I don’t.

On all my VH’s I use a deathless build in order to make use of the 50/150 urad anointment. It’s up 100% of the time as long as I keep my health under 50%. So, killing quickly is a necessary in my case. That’s why I suggested anointments would cancel out the need for a grog nozzle… I rely on ffyl and the quick kill to survive. Plus, it’s more fun…for me.

#19

What’s really great about BL3 is the build diversity. You can have a super OP VH with many, many different types of builds. The story may be lacking, but you can’t deny that BL3 is way more diverse, even with only 4 VH’s.

If you don’t agree, tell me how many endgame builds you have in BL2 compared to what you have to complete all content in BL3.

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#20

this is simply wrong on so many levels that i can not even grasp where to start.

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