#23

If you’re referencing current patch then this doesn’t matter and is irrelevant since you don’t need any gear or investment for it to not already be stupidly overpowered. Might be right on a technicality in terms of actual numbers, but I don’t think you can really get stronger than afk rolling the hardest content in the game in less than a minute.

No one can actually defend this:

3 Likes
#24

As shown in my example above this is just flat out wrong. You just don’t need much “extra investment” as the things IB wants to have are usually also the things Moze wants to have anyways.

#25

Fair enough then. I agree with you that I probably understated what is required of other vault hunters to make an action skill damaging, however my understanding is that if IB takes you out of combat, he needs to be powerful in some way.

#26

The guy in the vid I posted is only using Rocketeer and a crap snowdrift. Like I said, you’re right on a technicality but when put into practice it doesn’t matter.

I’m not counting skill point investment as speccing for it when it’s not an “investment” and we have 60 points to put across the board with only one place to go.

I’d be agreeing with you before this patch.

#27

So you want the degree of investment to be higher to be able to reach this level? Idk how you can make the investment higher, there’s very little gear affecting IB. His passives that affected iron Bear damage were the AOE and AS damage. You’re not counting skill points as they are not an investment according to you. Can I get an understanding of what really is an investment? On maybe a different character? Because you lose out on skill points if you invest into dakka bear, stainless steel bear, etc.

EDIT:
just want to voice a solution to change it up, I really feel like anoints that affect IB himself will make him more gear dependent and it might not be so hard. Make a grenade anoint, shield anoint, and a weapon anoint and boom, 3 more pieces of gear to affect IB itself.

2 Likes
#28

No I don’t want the amount of investment to be higher to reach this level, I don’t think you should be able to reach this level in the first place. Which is again afk rolling the hardest content in record times.

I’m not counting skill points because with how weak the red tree is there is really no way you can’t tick all the boxes with 58 points, unless you are making the effort to pick the weakest options on purpose.

You’re missing the fact that while very few pieces of gear directly affect IB (can’t be changed without a complete overhaul), in current patch which is what we’re talking about you don’t need to focus on weapons or gear choices anymore. It comes in second to IB. Before M2.0 you might remember there were various ways to build up competing and viable builds - bear focused, a weapon focused, or a hybrid. If you wanted bear to be good, it required much more give and take. With base IB so strong you take away variety and creativity, not increase it because anything less than slapping on a rocketeer is peanuts in comparison.

3 Likes
#29

I’d argue that SPs and CM + artifact are already a significant part of the investment for any character as it already covers most of the damage multipliers.

Not really, SPs + CM + artifact have always been the main source of power for IB focussed builds.

#30

Maybe if the red tree was actually good, this debate over whether it is okay or not to stomp this hard with IB would be put to rest. Perhaps the solution is nerfing base IB enough to keep it powerful, but not better than a gear invested vault hunter? I really don’t know at this point, I believe balancing from this point forward is actually pretty hard.

#31

No, as shown above the base is already weak enough. People not counting investment as investment is not a valid justification for a nerf.

1 Like
#32

I agree. Base damage nerfs are the worst possible way to go about this since it is purely the scaling multipliers of mayhem that cause things to spiral out of control.

The most sensible solution would be to go over each action skill individually and adjust the scaling to something not ridiculous. Maybe IB doesn’t need 30x damage, it may only need 20.

I doubt this will be how this approached though.

#33

the best solution would be to return to mayhem 1.0

2 Likes
#34

Good luck with that :rofl:

#35

i suggested it in a ticket…^^

#36

At least it’s fun now. A few weeks back it was pointless to even play, hopefully the pendulum doesn’t swing too far back that way.

#37

I’d completely disagree. IB has hardpoints that are only now usable as a result of the Mayhem damage scaling (bear fists, salamander). A better solution would be to do a balancing pass on all the hardpoints – turning the extremely hard-hitting ones down a bit (rails; sry bby, I luv u) and the turning others up.

3 Likes
#38

*So I typed most of this out earlier but just got around to posting. I want to make clear this is all referencing the state of AS/IB right now.

I guess I’m just tired of people saying you need to build for and invest in IB as a good excuse to validate IB’s current scaled strength, when it’s not. That’s my main point that I want to make clear.

Investment I feel in this context means making sacrifices in certain regards and working towards some goal/theory. When you alter the power disparity between two choices so much, you minimize the sacrifices required for a certain choice. To the point where it’s not really so much an investment as it is just the obvious path. That’s where we are right now in terms of AS strength.

A similar comparison is what SF is to capstones. It’s not an investment to go down to SF because of how strong it is - it’s a given in every build. And you mentioned CD of IB being long without an investment - when that is entirely negated by a few points in a Tier 1 skill of a tree you are going to go down to the bottom of anyways. So I don’t get the point of bringing that up. That’s where I find issue with the use of terms like investment.

If you aren’t trying to draw that argument then feel free to ignore me, just getting my thoughts out. Maybe I’m missing the focus of the conversation.

I think a couple people here are using different definitions of “Base IB”. At least I know I was.

And I hope no one is taking my posts too personally or anything of that nature. Another part of me feels it’s just a bit pointless to argue this stuff when I feel it’s likely to change very soon anyhow and we see what action they take. Which leads me to the point of why does it feel like they actually never test anything before pushing it through…

3 Likes
#39

They flat out admitted they really don’t test in a tweet I thought, not going to get the quote, but they asked something like “Are you okay with delayed content in exchange for testing?” Also, no one is taking posts personally at all. We love the game which is why we take time to type and think our thoughts out.

I agree with your capstone analogy, and that the skill point path is obvious for Moze. We all go blue tree so why not invest into iron bear, it will get us further down the tree. Going back to this skill path point, I guess what I’m saying is that there’s much utility in the other vault hunters’ action skills with little investment. They simply go down the tree and pick the action skill and augments they want, and it can be useful since they don’t get taken out of combat, it can really only help. They have utility.

IB without damage is a turtle. No useful augment, maybe some agro for 15 seconds or longer if you use an exploit, or you get to wait there to get back Moze’s health. That’s my validation for the damage we have now

Maybe IB does need to be a second health bar, but a second health bar that can kill things like Krieg sort of did. I never really used Krieg’s action skill in OP 8, but I imagine it would do okay damage. If we can tune Iron Bear down to the level of mobbing as Krieg’s action skill, we might be in business for a balanced IB.

3 Likes
#40

I definitely agree that it was no fun at all when 2.0 dropped. I stopped even using Iron Bear at all like 0% of the time for 2.0. So that definitely sucked. However I don’t find the overtune to be fun either although its better then it being complete trash. What I did very much find enjoyable was the end of MH 1.0/4 after they buffed him and it felt balanced yet strong. I had many builds utilizing IB at that time either using Autobear/Full Iron Bear or Hybrid foot/bear builds. I miss that although it could be a bit stronger then it was then and I’d be happy, but right now, it’s just too far the other way for my tastes to be much fun. It’s just IB wrecks everything regardless of even having skillpoints spent, just not too intriguing for me.

4 Likes
#41

True, that was a really good blend between skills, weapons and IB balance, and you did come up with some great builds. Now you can definitely just ride iron bear around while he destroys everything.

#42

IB replaces Moze, and it ends up making her gear very secondary once you’ve spent enough skill points, because of the fundamental way IB was designed. Even with a Rocketeer and you’re free to move about, IB will probably oneshot things before you can even aim at them heh.

Early game, there’s more of a balance. IB is an “oh shi-” button, and the cooldown is long and the duration is short. You use Moze’s gear more. Start spending skill points and he starts gaining power and stamina, and you start relying less and less on Moze’s weaponry and gear because you’re spending more and more time in IB.

It’s all fundamental to the way he was designed and I can’t think of a way to balance this without completely redesigning IB, but yeah that’s never gonna happen. Speaking for myself as someone who mains Moze a lot, I’ve moved away from using my usual Bear Trooper COM and I’ve specced out of a lot of the duration/cooldown skills so that I actually have less IB time and can use all the cool gear I have. (So I guess that’s a solution: make a conscious effort to de-emphasize IB a bit.)

(And oh well, I guess Gearless Moze can be a thing since Gearless Krieg was a thing. Auto Bear afk-soloing M10 Wotan reminded me of the video I saw of afk Hellborn Krieg soloing the Happy Couple on OP8.)