"I would be okay with IB buff if more gear is required" this argument doesn't hold up

[radioweavil]

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.

[Rumplebunny (disheveled lagomorph)]

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.)

[Wumgum]

@sneakynoodle

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.

Except you have to make sacrifices, HDP might excel for groups of trash mobs but is outperformed vs. Bosses / bulkier enemies by other weapons (both IBs and regular ones). Same for IBs more single target focused weapons, they’re outperformed vs. groups of enemies by HDP and various launchers. When you go into IB you sacrifice versatility as you can’t just swap to a different weapon to fit the situation.

Now if you really want to go after something “not having to make sacrifices” then you should at least choose a more valid target. Amara excels at everything the different IB weapons excel at once without having to make any concessions at all but that’s not something people seem to have an issue with.

@sneakynoodle

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.

It’s still an investment you have to make, it’s just one you would usually also make if you were building for something more “gun focused”. The main issue here isn’t IB but the red tree (and to some degree the capstone of the green one as well) not offering something which presents a “desirable alternative”. Right now it’s always just “blue + X” but pretty much never “green + red”.