Interaction between KIPH, GS, LL, IRA & YKY

Borderlands 2 Salvador the Gunzerker
#1

Fairly new to using Sal, and I’m trying to figure out a good balance of all these skills. I understand that a lot of builds involve high/varying levels of GS, LL, IRA & YKY, and also that KIPH will proc whenever GS does.

What I was a little confused on was - why not focus more on a balance of having Keep It Piping Hot active all the time? If my math is right I can just put one point into Last Longer & 5 points into Get Some to make the cooldown time (assuming I’m shooting stuff and GS is active ~100% of the time) equal my Gunzerking time, therefore making KIPH also active ~100% of the time. It seems like that would lead to higher average DPS from KIPH and also more skill points to use other places.

Am I missing other gameplay dynamics here (like the reactivation time of a Gunzerk cycle) or something? Feels like logically -> if there are enemies then I’ll be shooting them, leading to the above GS/KIPH uptime, and if there aren’t any enemies then there’s no need to be Gunzerking.

I appreciate any feedback and did try to do as much research on this as possible around topics that already exist, but didn’t find this specific discussion.

Thanks!

#2

1: you’re never going to get Get some active 100% of the time, that’s just unrealistic of an assumption. The only thing you can really calculate, are the ODDS of having Get Some active X% of the time, on average. If you base your decisions on an absolute lottery-winning best case scenario, you’re not going to get the results you want the vast majority of the time.

2: Gunzerking is SO MUCH more important than KIPH that you shouldn’t compromise on your overall Gunzerking time to ensure that you get KIPH all the time.

Basically, you’re trying to avoid this situation: Gunzerking while having a full cooldown, and no KIPH.

… By increasing the chance of this situation to happen: not Gunzerking

I know which I would rather avoid.
And on top of that, if you’re in the first situation, where things are going so well that you have a completely reset cooldown… Do you really need the small bonus from KIPH ?

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#3

Yeah, I definitely haven’t played him up to the level where I have any kind of feel for how often/long Get Some is going to be active, nor how relatively beneficial KIPH is, I was just looking at the descriptions and thinking that hey, the 25% gun damage bonus seemed pretty sweet, hehe.

I guess I was hoping that since GS can be active for 3 seconds every 3 seconds that would more or less equate to permanent uptime, but it sounds like that’s unrealistic given average gameplay. :disappointed:

Anyway, thanks for the quick reply and feedback! I appreciate it!

#4

You’ll know you have achieved a good synergy when your gunzerk has reset while you’re still gunzerking- no other character can do that…:grinning:

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#5

Haha nice! I’m pretty sure I wasn’t doing the math right anyway - I had assumed that the default 42 second cooldown started as soon as you activated Gunzerk … and after a bit more reading I realize how untrue that is lol. Came across this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imotQjmmnVw - so I’m learning quite a bit thanks to @Chuck80 and @Derch (thanks guys!).

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#6

Our pleasure :slight_smile:

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#7

The unfortunate thing about GS (iirc), is that it’s duration doesn’t refresh if you get a kill during its effect, so unless you time your kills perfectly, 1 every 3 seconds, you’re not going to get that 100% uptime, even if you’re getting kills faster than 1 per 3 seconds. So yea, 100% uptime is virtually impossible for GS, that said, 50% is reasonably achievable against weaker enemies. I have indeed managed to get Gunzerk completely off cooldown while I still had some duration left on it (YKY can do some amazing work since the duration add is per kill and has no cooldown or other lockout, I’ve managed to Gunzerk for a good 2 minutes straight and only stopped because they were all dead so I couldn’t keep it up), so in the event that you are confident you won’t take a knee in the near future and your Gunzerk is fully cooled down while still active, yes, it can be beneficial to manually end your Gunzerk and start again so you can get KIPH back.

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#8

What can be done that is in line with what the OP wants is to use the leg. Gunzerker COM and rely on the bonus skill points. 10/5 in both last longer and YKY is more than enough, and 5/5 in both is usually satisfactory.

If you put about 2 points in each, you would be sitting at 7/5 in each skill and have 6 extra skill points… Though you would have to spend at least 4 of those in the Rampage tree to still be able to reach the capstone.

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#9

Yep, that’s great food for thought. I think GS operates off of damage rather than kills, so it may be a bit easier to keep up than I was thinking. @Chuck80’s point about KIPH being nice, but not something you want to build around is probably my best learning from this thread to be honest.

I’m only about level 15 and having troubles just staying alive right now in MP (3-4 players) so I may go ahead and respec into Brawn for now anyway. It’s tough to decide between the quick payoff of Brawn and the longer-term benefits of Rampage though haha.

I guess it’s just one of the things I love about this game (and Sal in particular) is that your build actually does make a difference in how you play the game overall.

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#10

If you can’t reach YKY or Get some yet, you should put your points divided between brawn and rampage. Hard to kill and Inconceivable are your 2 best skills right now. Last longer is the next step after that.

Stick to defensive gear (Adaptive shields, vitality relics, COMs that boost health or HtK) as your DPS is probably enough already just by virtue of using 2 guns. Shotguns are your best friends, especially hyperion ones.

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#11

Heartily agree with health boosting suggestions for survivability on Salvador, as both HtK and Gunzerk give % regen, so more max life=more hp regen’d. Especially handy if you’re the close range person in your group since you will be eating the brunt of enemy aggro. That said, Rampage tree effects that increase Gunzerk uptime fit naturally into that same defensive strategy (hence a Rampage+Brawn spec can make for really powerful juggernaut builds; do good but not spectacular damage, while also being hard af to kill while doing it).

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#12

I respecced to do this (HTK & Inconcievable) and grabbed a couple of good purples out of the golden chest and found that I’m hanging out in FFYL much less often now, haha. Just finished Last Longer also and I figure I’ll just inch my way up the Rampage tree (as most folks have suggested here) and see how it goes.

Either way this is turning out to be one of the most fun classes for me to play, so thanks again for all the great advice!

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