just don’t discuss fl4ks gender anymore, please. 
i found fl4k is more diverse than anyone, i can go gamma, i can go deathless, i can go rakk, i can go fadeaway.
unlike zane that one build fits almost any playstyle with just changing anointments on gears.
Yeah, my Social list gets more bleak every day that passes.
This diversity was the reason I liked Maya, you could run like 3 different COMs on her for raiding and mobbing with the same build and it worked fine (Cat, Siren, and Trickster). I like that I can swap between BH, CS, or DE COMs on FL4k and also swap my action skill and still be just fine without having to re-spec.
One of my main goals is to be able to hop on and complete any content I want, and do it pretty quickly. Fl4k can do that, without having to re-spec based upon what content I want to do.
No Legendary Binder??? So underrated lol
I can probably take those weapons to a higher level, maybe MM8, if I lean harder on better tactics (lazy Beastmaster this evening… not shooting everything out of Fade Away, not always jumping for the Nimble Jack, leaving the Spiderant to do its own thing, etc.)
I have three Beastmasters, each focusing on a different capstone, manufacturer, and pet (so gameplay among them is fairly different even though they’re the same character). They’re as fun as any of the other Vault Hunters… my Jakobs rep can step to higher Mayhem levels than my CoV rep can (and Tediore probably can with some higher-level gear), but I just scale back the Mayhem level to match my loadout (and mood for aggressive combat).
The gear is sort of divided into two camps at the moment: non-anointable/Mayhem-leveled weapons (mostly mission rewards), and their upleveled counterparts (at random, unknown Mayhem levels), so I don’t mix them when loading them up.
Fl4k is probably my biggest beast still. I have viable M10 builds with all the VH’s. Amara is fun with ties that bind, I have a nice non sliding zane using that redistributor barrier amp trick. Still works wonders. Moze is probably my weakest, tried working both minesweeper and a Yellowcake build, just not really liking the mechanics of them. FL4K is just a superior breed of cat at present though. Either for bossing OR for mobbing / questing.
I used to run rakk attack and loved it while leveling up the story. Now i tend to run a gamma burst with a red fang deathless Fl4k. That pet taunt is massively effective and works well for mobs or bossing. Boosted the heck out of my pets HP and I can pretty much keep him alive with the damage I am doing. The Taunt even seems to last if pet dies and is in FFYL. Many times i can run up and revive while mobs are still pounding on him and they still pay no attention to me. Mainly using recursion and reflux with Kaoson for singles and Sandhawk if I need a boost.
I have a Fadeaway Fl4k that I run something for variety and pure bossing. 5 seconds of pure crits with a fully auto sandhawk keeps my ammo refilled and takes out pretty much anything out there. I have even been able to run the entire Scraptrap farm with cartel enabled using ONLY the sandhawk.
As to what they are gonna do to pets and action skills? I would assume they will be doing the same scale they did to weapons. About a 130% increase at M10. I hope they do a lot better than that as the activation time on most AS is not worth the pathetic damage done. ANY weapon out there will out dps the action skills.
The trouble with boosting FL4K’s pet damage is it is a passive. Just basically toss on an extra percent damage done plus some tauntiness with no effort from the player.
Kind of like the sentinel for Zane.
So, whatever they would increase it by would stand to reason they will assume the amount of damage done with the other VH skill trees and action skills then have the pet do enough to make up for any difference. That would be the more fair method.
Unfortunately, it is a bit hard to quantify as so many builds and interactions with all the VH can drastically change output.
Just my 17 cents worth.
You can’t really swap between Binder and those other 3 COMs because of Sub-Sequence. Or at least not the way I specced it. I tried really hard to like Sub-Sequence and Thought Lock, but I just couldn’t. I like the top of that skill tree quite a bit though.
Thank you, honestly!
I’ve been lurking around here and always happy for anything Fl4k related comes up.
I’ve noticed that the Moze section was the most active area. At least for the longest time. Since the latest announcements (balance patch) it’s gotten quiet everywhere.
Amara is pretty dead as well. Even Zane section is rather quiet.
But I, too, need my fix. I want to talk about Fl4k even though the upcoming patch corrects a lot of stuff.
Fl4k deserves sth new just because we haven’t gotten anything really.
The only thing about this is that even if the damage is passive, it is so ridiculously low that it basically doesn’t exist.
If you compare the DPS of Spiderant Scorcher vs Rakk attack, it’s pathetic how easily Rakk outdamages her. With full bonuses, atomic aroma, gamma, and terror, a fully buffed spiderant gets out DPSed by Rakk with just IPS, Grim Harvest, Frenzy, and Flock n load. You don’t even need splash, V2, or the elemental bonus from Scorcher. 3 skills and an augment will out DPS your pet with more than 10 skills devoted to it. And people still tend to think Rakk are weak, so you can only imagine the dire straights pets are in.
Yeah, I just want to talk about my main lol. Reddit doesn’t do anything for me since it’s just people asking about builds all the time. I don’t know how Amara mains deal with the silence over there.
I am not sure what is the cause of the silence on here - the fact that we all have been playing BL a lot longer now than we had when BL2 and TPS came out, and now we are just much, much better at figuring out damage formulas, interactions, etc., or whether the game is just dead.
Either way, it’s not great.
I think a lot of it is that people just aren’t experimenting. The Moze section is on fire because they try EVERYTHING. The new elemental nova anoint, the reflect damage, anything that may effect IB, they are constantly tinkering and trying new things. It doesn’t seem like that experimentation is going on for the other classes…
My gameplay overall has scaled waaay back to maybe an hour or two daily. Re-employment and insanely nice weather outside are the main factors (where when we first locked down during the tail end of winter, I might hit the game for like sixteen hours straight. I haven’t finished Doom Eternal nor have I even started Halo 2 out of the MCC either (and Rage 2 has been knocking on my door for a replay or at least revisit to the vacant end game; I don’t think I actually played the last DLC).
I mean, there are literally probably 50% or more of the weapons in BL3 that I may never even have used! Who is not still experimenting with the game’s mechanics? I am not super into the math but I do enjoy the game’s cool interactions.
I should say, we don’t seem to be sharing our experimentation. Maybe because people don’t seem to be interested, maybe for some other reason. But Moze players just seem to love sharing things.
A lot of this has to do with the rise of Discord. Its become a platform that gets a ton of chatter and theory crafting on it. So for instance in spite of my personal testing being hosted here, when I’m working out builds and theory crafting it tends to be in one of the Borderlands discords that I actually discuss it.
There’s a very fragmented community playing this game. There’s only a couple faces that I see popping up on multiple platforms with any form of regularity. Most folks have picked their preferred BL3 platform and stuck to it. When I see Fl4k theory crafting its mostly hosted on the Fl4k discord that Dakquan and Abbyhour link to from YouTube.
I know @sammantixbb is active on the Discord and I’ve been tempted to make one. I just can’t handle multiple social medias 
. Keeping up with this and reddit is doable, but beyond that feels a bit overwhelming.
Still, I am addicted to FL4K chat…
I took that plunge a few months back and really haven’t regretted it.
Those are fair points and ones I had not really considered. I do not personally use Discord but have a ton of friends who do, and they tell me there is a lot of cool discussion and trading that goes on there.
I don’t know, I guess I just kind of miss when the GBX forums were the primary place where the game’s discussion took place. Maybe I am just stuck in 2015? LOL
A little jealous tbh. They do try everything and have some very senior players in there that help the newer ones.