#21

Very much so! Thanks a million.

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#22

You’re welcome! More than happy to help if I can. :blush:

Just one additional thought for you:

In some areas, and for some bosses, running a build with a lot of non-elemental damage might slow you down a bit due to shielded enemies.

I almost always carry a single shock or radiation weapon of some kind for that reason, even just a purple of some description can do the trick.

My favourite for that purpose at the moment is the Redistributor, that’s a relatively early mission reward. Great for fast shield stripping from whole mobs, and even though there are probably better options, it’s decent for boss shields too.

#23

What’s a good leveling build? I can see how the kill skills can be useful, but what should we take when we don’t have access to 48 skill points?

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#24

When I was levelling, I stuck to the Hitman tree all the way through to the capstone. I used grenades in the right action slot (heal grenades can be a nice backup plan), and the SNTNL Action Skill up until that point. This was before the recent buffs to SNTNL, and I didn’t run into too many tough spots, so this should still be a pretty decent way to level I think.

For the Hitman tree, I started with Violent Momentum (damage), then Cool Hand (reload); both of which help your early game DPS quite a lot. Neither require kill activation to get some use from them. Cool Hand isn’t one of the most exciting skills, but we reload all the time, and it all adds up. Salvation would be next up, but if you’re having problems with survivability, adding points here earlier could help a lot too.

However you progress it, after the first 15 points I’d focus on maxing out Playing Dirty as soon as possible; keeping your eyes peeled for a class mod to boost it as well. From there, you need just 5 more points in Hitman to reach the capstone, so I’d usually go with Violent Speed for mobility purposes, though depending on loadout, you could also run with Violent Violence for a bit more DPS.

If you’re having trouble activating kill skills early on, try to pick off the weakest enemies first, or target those already damaged by SNTNL or your grenades. When mobbing in the early game, I’d usually toss a grenade into the mix first, then follow up with SNTNL if there were a lot of enemies, shotgunning my way through most of the rest.

Does that help at all?

2 Likes
#25

Thank you for the amazing write up and detailed explainations. It’s also really awesome to see you reply to everyone’s questions and comments!

I am having trouble killing Graveward on Mayhem 3. It seems like this fight will take like 15 minutes if I would ever stick it out. I have followed your build according the link you posted. I am wondering what is the normal rotation I guess for boss fights?

Say you drop to Graveward, would you pop shield, lay down damage, pop clone when skills are needed, more damage, and just rotate through?

1 Like
#26

Almost identical to mine and I’ve playing that build since that day. It’s great.

Great work dude.

Don’t sleep on The Flood either, it’s my favourite revolver when it comes to Zane. Crazy fire rate and unlike other guns it shots all the bullets when you maintain the trigger down.

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#27

Yes it did. Thanks! :dukeaffirmative:

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#28

@meyer.jere1
Aww… Thank you very much for the kind words! Very glad to see the write up is useful for people, and hopefully the build is a lot of fun too. :blush:

For boss fights at Mayhem 3, there are no doubt far better players than myself lurking around these parts, so hopefully they can provide you with some further tips for Graveward if you need them. Regarding this specific build however, a couple of things for you:

For boss fight skill rotation, I usually start with the Digi-Clone, and try to stay as mobile as possible at first. Keeping a little distance between you and the clone can pull you out of trouble if you ever get caught, but I usually find Barrier the stronger skill of the two in this context. I rarely pick up the Barrier against Graveward, as it halves the buffs (including the Barrier amp damage bonus) and he is pretty static positionally, ground-tilt attack issues notwithstanding. As you rightly suggest, keeping the rotation relatively balanced is my usual approach. If you have good opportunity to fully unload on a crit spot though, and a full mag, your cooldowns should be low enough to overlap skills for a bit of extra burst occasionally too (courtesy of Synchronicity).

Other than that, I’ve found that it’s worth paying a lot of attention to the passives on your CMOD/Relic loadout for bosses. If you’re able to crit solidly, a crit damage multiplier can really boost your damage output significantly against bosses with high health pools like Graveward. I’m currently using a CMOD with +45% Jakobs crit damage for example, and the difference is substantial when compared to a +25% Weapon Damage alternative.

Aside from loadout, and if you’ll forgive me for stating the obvious here, your core damage bonuses are coming from Violent Momentum (keep moving!), Synchronicity/Donnybrook (keep an action skill activated!), and Confident Competence (keep your shields active!).

Other than that, big health pools bosses are always a patience game I find, though personally, patience isn’t really one of my strong suits. :joy:

Hope all that helps at least a little?

2 Likes
#29

Awesome! A very nice build, so thanks very much for sharing! I find it really interesting to see different builds gravitating to the same - or similar - core skills. If different people are independently arriving at the same conclusions, I imagine those choices must carry at least a little weight in terms of skill/build viability; which is reassuring. :smiley:

I do have a couple of questions regarding your skill choices if you don’t mind indulging me for a moment? Not challenging them in any way, just very eager for information is all.

Firstly, do you find that you get much utility out of Adrenaline?

To elaborate: At one point, I sat down and timed the durations of my cooldowns manually. Although this method was never intended to be pointpoint accurate, I did find that my numbers at the time didn’t match what I expected mathematically, even with full shields and in the safety of Sanctuary. I don’t have those exact numbers to hand any more, but I do recall something seeming amiss with how Adrenaline was working. I realise that Cooldown is a matter of diminishing returns, but perhaps this disparity could be due to some wonky Cooldown stacking mechanics, some sort of bug in the skill itself, or even a problem with the spreadsheet I quickly knocked up for my calculations at the time. You’ve inspired me to do a little more testing now at any rate, but I’d be interested to read more about your experiences with it?

Secondly, would you mind elaborating on why you find Hearty Stock to be a better option than Ready For Action? I do tend to favour faster, lower capacity shields for this build, so opted for the latter myself, but I’d be interested in hearing about which shields you choose to combine with Hearty Stock?

Ahh! A bazillion guns in the bank (okay, okay, less than fifty), but I’m yet to find The Flood, or a level 50 The Duc as yet. Very much appreciate the tip however! The search continues…

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#30

I may have a flood. What platform are you on? If it’s the PC, I’ll see if I have one the next time I play.

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#31

Really appreciate the very kind offer mate, though I’m on PS4, and don’t subscribe to the PSN Plus service anyhow (long story).

Thankfully, I have a small group of Borderlands-addicted friends, who I play with locally, so you can bet I’ll be hitting them up if I haven’t found either by the next time we all meet. :slight_smile:

Thanks for the thought though, you’re a superstar!

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#32

Sure! No problem.

I haven’t hard-tested it to the point of calculating the exact seconds and all of that. I needed to put 5 points on something to reach tier 2 skills, so I found myself using Adrenaline. When your shield is full, both CDs (clone and barrier) come back almost inmediatly. My shield is not always full, of course, but it is sometimes because I use The Transformer. It also provides “inmortality” when you leave 1 Badass with shock-RL spamming and recovering your shield all the time.

Instead of Hearty Stock, I use 5/5 Brain Freeze. Altho Hearthy Stock isn’t a bad option, 2/5 Brain Freeze lets you freeze enemies easy enough. Ready for action is not a bad option, it’s just that I don’t have problems with my actual shield recharge delay because I’m using Quick Breather, that allows my shield to instantly beging recharging the moment i swap places with my clon, thus empowering adrenaline.

But yes, I do feel like some skills are up to personal prefference. This is just my personal approach.

;-]

1 Like
#33

@Adamanthys

That’s excellent, thanks very much for the detailed reply, helpful tips, and useful information!

Since we last touched base, I’ve done a little more play testing, focusing on Zane’s Cooldown, and Adrenaline in particular. FWIW, I thought I’d share my not-overly-scientific findings below.

With no way to deactivate Guardian Ranks, I was stuck with using a ~10% GR Cooldown Reduction buff throughout, but I did some uptime testing in Sanctuary, with and without skill points/gear; and then some gameplay through Lectro City, Athenas, and parts of Eden 6 for anecdotal purposes.

In short, and if maintaining full shields, I found 5 points in Adrenaline (with no other Cooldown buffs) gave me very comparable uptime to running a +20% Cooldown relic. Which is great, because it seems the math there all works out as it should. :+1:

So the choice seems to fall between using 5 skill points on Adrenaline, or using your sole relic slot, to get that extra +20% Cooldown buff. Either way, +30% total Cooldown Reduction seems to do the job, and both options are completely viable for our purposes. :blush:

The big advantage to using Adrenaline would be keeping your relic slot open for better options. I haven’t had much luck with finding decent relics so far myself, but others do seem to have found some with great buffs and utility.

Alternatively, the benefit from using a Cooldown relic, would be adding those 5 skill points elsewhere, and not having to relying on full shields as much. The caveat with the extra skill points being, that you can only spend them on Hearty Stock, or Ready For Action, anyhow.

As you rightly suggest, I think this choice really comes down to what type of shield you are using. Some won’t see much gameplay benefit from the buffed Shield Rate/Delay of Ready For Action.

In my case however, using the Re-Router amp shield, I do get some solid utility out of improved shield Rate in particular. The L50 Re-Router has a fairly low base Delay anyhow (2.9s), but the improved Rate helps quite a lot. Once recharging starts, It cuts the time taken to return to full shields from ~7 seconds to ~5.5, meaning more frequent amp shots if nothing else.

Not really a scientific analysis here, more anecdotal, but thought I’d share anyhow. :blush:

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#34

A fast-moving Zane build that makes use of low rof high damage weapons with Playing Dirty? I like. Good build =)

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#35

Bingo! :blush:

Just between you and me, I blame far too many hours spent with Zer0, and Jakobs Quads, in BL2 for this one. :joy:

Glad you like the build, and appreciate the kudos too. Thanks!

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#36

Haha Zer0 was my final playthrough in BL2 a few months ago. I stuck with sniping stuff, but loved his variety regardless. Before that was Gaige with anarchy torgue quads. So yeah I understand both sides of that deal XD

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#37

My man! You know what’s up. :blush:

I’ve said it on occasion elsewhere around these boards, but I see quite a lot of parallels between Zane and Zer0. Different of course, but the way Zane’s kit is organised, I think he leans towards some very similar playstyle options (sans melee perhaps).

Certainly no complaints on that from me at any rate. :blush:

#38

Yes, same. You know the playstyle I’ve chosen with Zane, which is not far from Zer0 at all. So I’m bound to agree, he’s taken quite a bit of inspiration from Zer0. Which is an awesome thing, since with his wise-cracks and overall caricature, it’s a blast to play him.

2 Likes
#39

Say, I’ve found the Recharger to have some pretty good synergy with Zane. Its stats are nothing special, but it recharging as soon as it broken really helps with keeping it up at all times.

2 Likes
#40

Very true, and a solid tip, thanks!

Pretty sure I had a Recharger equipped for most of my normal playthrough, and found it quite effective.

Since hitting Mayhem modes, I’ve preferred the added damage and burst heal of the Re-Router myself; though Zane can be pretty flexible with shield choice I think, and there are plenty of good options. :+1:

1 Like