Let me vent about Zane

Borderlands 3 Zane the Operative
#1

A list of things and ventings about Zane… my favourite Vault Hunter that seems to be forgotten about since DLC1 all because he has one… and only one amazing build.

  1. How hard you have to work compared to other VHs. I play as Zane and struggle, same content/difficulty with Moze and it’s almost boring with how she steam rolls through.

  2. The non-existent variety. The fact that without seeing dead class Mod Zane is practically crippled. All of his class mods are garbage… Cold Warrior… Really… that is a legendary bonus… A random status effect when enemy is frozen… Anti freeze that doesn’t stop you from freezing… Tech sorry that has a 5% chance to keeping up your drone that you don’t need more help keeping it up… Wtf

  3. Reliance on violent momentum:. Everywhere you look, this is mandatory and necessity. This also makes barrier on the ground pointless

  4. Broken/buggy skills:. So many synergies missed, conflicting skills, useless skills… So many … Even his capstones are garbage… all three. Double barrel is nice after clone damage but only certain guns are useful on clone… Distributed Denial doesn’t work with 90% shields out there… And seeing read gets activated once… Then you keep them up and it’s a pointless skill.
    I’ll just leave This here (thx @flightx3aa

  5. Annointments: best are ASE which are counter to Zane’s goal of constant Action skill up time. Action skill active have been added but the best is and additive buff to weapon damage… something Zane didn’t need. His ONLY buff to elements is drone cryo… None on clone, and barrier gets the fastly underwhelming status effect chance…

  6. action skill activation: there are annoints with this… Zane had Skills (like a ghost and seeing read) with action skill activation. These would all work and open up possibilities of you made barrier pick up and drop … And clone swap count as an activation!

  7. Lack of cryo on the cryo character. Buff his cryo use and focus… give more buffs against cryo

  8. Animations on action skills… Why does blowing up the clone, picking up/putting down the barrier (outside of initial activation) clone swap all have long animations that conflict with his mobility. You can out run your barrier animation… you can’t swap places with clone when sliding… You can’t do anything when blowing up the clone… Why hinder the speedy character.

9). Why is it every time you touch Zane you break his barrier and we have to deal with projectiles shooting right through the barrier… you have “fixed” this multiple times and it keeps happening… well it hasn’t lately because you haven’t helped Zane lately

Please @Gbx just give Zane the love he deserves so he can be as diverse as the rest of the cast… With interesting and niche builds that are viable.

Thanks for all that read this far.

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#2

Ive been a Zane main for a while and can empathize with every point you made. However, there are a few tips I can provide you to help alleviate some of your frustration with Zane.

Zane is not Moze and your strategies must evolve to suit Zane’s strengths to be as successful with him as you are with Moze.

Zane is very, and I mean very gear dependent to steamroll content like Moze does. Below, I posted some of his best performing gear:

The 2 necessities are:
Seein Dead COM
Monarch with SNTNL Cryo

Really good weapons for Zane (always use the SNTNL Cryo anointment if possible)

Light Show
Flipper
Maggie
Redistributer (with Electric Banjo artifact)

With Zane, movement speed and SNTNL Cryo is key to high sustainable DPS.

I recommend using Barrier (with Dome augment) so you can have the Barrier follow you while providing 360° of protection from projectiles. Dome will also allow you to drop the Barrier if you choose to and allows you to pick it back up if you want. This is the key to Zane’s survivability.

Always have SNTNL Drone selected and in use when in combat with weapons that have the SNTNL Cryo anointment. This is the only anointment you are concerned with when playing Zane. Anything else is inferior for him.

If you are playing on PC, I can provide you with the SNTNL Cryo weapons and really good Seein Dead COMs to get you all geared up and ready for all content on M10.

2 Likes
#3

I appreciate the venting, but complaining about COMs and then leaving out his two most-viable (that aren’t Seein’ Dead) is a bit unfair. Executor puts in good work, and people regularly seem to make Infiltrator-centred builds.

Are they are good as Seein’ Dead? No. Are they unplayable? Also no.

Zane could do with a whole bunch of tweaks, you are right, but he’s not as bad as you’re making him out to be.

Also haven’t seen your Barrier problems at all, and I’ve been barrier / drone since release. I mean, I’ve seen them in the past, but not recently as far as I’m aware. If you’re console though, maybe - I know console in general has a lot of issues compared to the PC versions.

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#4

zane is god aweful actually executor bonuses are ~20% same with infiltrator if i remember these numbers correctly, actually conductor is second best “playable” com while antifreeze and infiltrator are best raw dmg comes and that god awefulness has to do with violent momentum scaling curve rather than being diminshing returns type it is rather opposite. do not sugur coat how bad zane is, you know me i have been here since day one fighting against zane myths but most of what OP said is true. without double barrel the best way to play zane is constalty blowing up clone and using ase+barrier which is indicative of how ■■■■ the character handles in absolute endgame meta and that is with seein dead. you remove seein dead and double barrel and zane is far behind even moze (without IB and skag den scaling) zane has effective use of least amount of anoints more than half of his action skill augments are plnety useless. his class mod special effects are extremely low tier compared to what fl4k and moze and amara got. his tier 5 skills have by far the least amount of value outside of hitman tree.

i love zane my playtime is 80% zane but fl4k is so much better design all around that it just pisses me off. a character with no life steal feels like an absolute treat to play you can actually aim and you do not lose dmg for that. yeah megavore is cheap but that is like only cheapo in his design fl4k’s design the class mods are on average way stronger and top3 are fairly competitive at endgame with honorable mention of red f4ng aggro relief as well making it 4. zane is such a train wreck to play from so many perspectives. but he is by far the most engaging still with clone swapping and action skill managing. But do not even pretend infiltrator and antifreeze do anytihng they are just used t oget 10/5 violent momentum not because of the special effect they provide. which they provide omegalul/10 kind of boost to your game play and executor is like 3 times worse than barrier crit anoint so there is that lol. if you doubled all the other com’s effects they would still be never picked up over seein dead and even if you trippled them then you can choose them only because you want more challenge not because they’d be made better than seein dead. as seein dead actually solves all problems for zane providing always on life steal fire rate and projectile count boost for … just shooting things. you can strip zane of cap stones and have him use seein dead and he will outperform a build with all capstones and no seein dead. (okay no clone is actually ridiculously OP but you get the point, thing does more dmg than VH himself)

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#5

I’ve been fighting for Zane as well. Not at as high levels as you (gameplay wise), I tapped out before old M4, kept at old M3 until 2.0. Now at M4 in the newer system. I can probably do M6 with my current Executor build. I’m not even cheesing that badly, just an anointed Hellwalker and occasionally a Beacon (okay, a bit of cheese).

I was yelling about Barrier when everybody thought it sucked :stuck_out_tongue: Trust me, I’ve been there.

I’m not saying Zane doesn’t need work. I’ve never said that. I’ve never said he’s better than FL4K, or has better DPS than Moze or Amara. But he’s far from terrible. That’s all I’m trying to say.

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#6

That was not op’s point mate. He is talking in endgame perspective and he is right it is not that zane is behind moze or fl4k at all he is even ahead with clone and seein dead out there the problem is the way you have to play to be there which is a legit concern. Moze is not sparkling good designed either she is carried by bear scaling and skag den short fuse scaling but her coms are legit better than zane by a country mile. As to green tree there is bunch of skills that are completely waste of skill points due to either guardian rank tree or the bonuses they provide and he is also tight about distributed denial it hardly takes advantage of any shields in a meaningful way

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#7

I guess my point is even if you’re going to moan about Zane in endgame (M10, whatever), focusing on the worst COMs isn’t much of a vent. Should be focusing on Executor and Infiltrator, as they’re the best he has (outside of Seein’ Dead. I don’t have time with Conductor yet).

I keep saying “Zane needs tweaks”. I don’t think he needs all the stuff the OP is asking for, though, that’s all. And things like “grounded barrier pointless with VM” . . . no, because you can shoot through it, but nevermind. It’s vent, I get that.

I guess I’m still not over everyone complaining he was too strong, some months back :smiley: Bit of a topsy-turvy ride for a Zane main.

#8

You’re doing it wrong OP, you’re complaining about Zane as a character when he’s an action skill. The Clone is the real vault hunter.

8 Likes
#9

@tuck7216 first thank you for taking the time with explaining these elements. However I will say i knew all of this information before but this also shows exactly what is wrong with Zane. YOu have to be so specific in your choices … there is no diversity which is awful. There should be multiple ways to play ever vault hunter… your post shows that there is practically 1 way. And alot of your points point out exactly what my vent post is about. (Always use sentinel cryo… there you go… no other good annoints… and what if i dont want sentinal in my build… i’m SOL)

@Gorbles I could have made the post 8 times longer if i wanted to vent about every skill… every com… every missed synergy… (part of the reason why i posted @flightx3aa video) Now let me respond to the two coms you mentioned. The two “most viable” outside of seeing dead do not make it viable.
Infiltrator com… only purpose is upping speed for violent momentum (see point 3 in OP), the fact that the shield goes down on activation means bonuses from green tree disappear… limited build focus… also if you keep your action skills up you can never drain your shield again using this… so then it becomes pointless. Yes its better then some of the ones i mentioned… but still isn’t great and the buff to dmg/speed is minimal As @Hexxusz0r stated
Executor… as mentioned by Hex again, he bonuses are awful… some of them are pointless Status effect damage and chance… cause status effects do tons of damage… Handling and accuracy, when does zane have an issue with this… the only good boost is crit damage and its still a low %. Also this only works when getting kills… which means it becomes useless in boss fights… and without seein dead… your kills skills… Zane’s biggest boosters become useless in boss fights.

Lets talk about some other ones that are actually decent class mods but still fall short. Conductor… states you get 25% per action skill that is proportional to up time. So if you have full uptime on both action skills you are supposed to get 50% shock damage… videos out there have proven that you don’t even get the 50. Ontop of that… his annoint for drone gives 100% cryo… just to have drone up… no management… but to get 50% shock you need to keep your skills at full for as long as possible… and cryo is already more damaging then shock when you look at resistences.

Hustler… could have been great… but instead of making it synergize and letting us do a crit build… the crits are FAKE crits… and take no buffs from crit damage on gear… and when you get a crit… its back to zero bonus… so ever crit go back to class mod not doing anything for you. Better off just improving your aim and hitting crits then relying on this. Megavore is a ton better than this.

As for the barrier problems… they were seen when Gbx was actually updating zane back in base game and DLC1… as the OP stated… they haven’t touched his green tree at all since… and even still. the fact that the barrier broke MULTIPLE time in the SAME WAY is something that shouldn’t happen.

I’m not saying he needs everything i’m complaining about… but the fact that there is THIS MUCH to complain about it awful development planning. I didn’t even go into how awful his synergies are… you have a skill that gives buffs to zane for having full shield… then diagonally from it you have a skill that gives more health regen when you have less shield…wtf… it would make great sense that at full shield get more health regen… or how about grenade regen on the character that doesn’t throw grenades… or get bullet dodge that increases when action skills are activated… on the character whos gimmick is to keep action skills up… and his ONLY “quick” action skill end and start has such a long animation that you are spending all your time just doing that instead of playing the game (Spawn close… blow up clone… sspawn clone) to get 10% bullet ignore. Like a ghost is a TIER 7 SKILL… wtf!!

I could go on and on… but i’ll stop here. Thanks to all for listening to me ramble and rant at the awful planning and synergizing with Zane’s development… lets hope they show some love at some point.

5 Likes
#10

I feel you. I want to play Zane with Distributed Denial, Clone and Dome, and no need to rely on movement speed. Will there be a build for that though? I seriously wonder.

2 Likes
#11

You can do it with nova burner dome clone it is just not as effective. Not that you can not use any of these but unlike fl4k when u choose stalker bounty hunter or st4kbot for zane you choose struggle or seein dead. Struggle or double barrel struggle or violent momentum. You can play CCC DD setup in m10 but it is not worthy of all tje power curve loss

#12

@damien_hine CCC with DD and DB (full green/red build) is my favourite build since launch… And all I’ve watched it do is suffer from bugs, glitches and die every scaling patch. I want to play tactical marksman Zane… Not hip fire spray and pray sonic the hedgehog Zane. (Although sonic Zane is super fun… it’s not my prefered playstyle)

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#13

It’s frustrating. I remember working on a build with you back during the M4 days but things are different now. Who knows? Now they’re buffing Zane, maybe we’ll get something good for him.

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#14

@damien_hine Wow good memory, I forgot about that in the M4 days… Wanted the build to work so bad but no way you could boss with it… Forget Wotan lol.

Now with more skill points, here is my hopeful build (not knowing what is getting buffed just hoping the crap skills are getting buffed/fixed.
My green/red clone/dome/CCC build

#15

Looks good. I think I’m going to put it out of my mind until we see how these latest Zane changes settle. I like hearing them saying there’s more on the way!

#16

Gonna be very interesting to see how my Executor does later tonight. Might respect to get Cold Bore back (I’m using Cutpurse + Facepuncher, plus Hellwalker, so I can swap pretty easily).

#17

@damien_hine definitely I retested in the more to come changes

@Gorbles agreed. Executer might be fantastic if the buffed the numbers enough. Personally I’m curious about the conductor. Shields are the only thing that resists cryo Zane… so having free shock opens up cryo focus (except for stupid ANNOINTED lol)

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#18

values are good not seein dead good but good. up to 80% crit or 100% shock dmg but you have to work for it … which is fun!

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#19

So as long as you stick to a single class mod, and probably a single skill build, a single artifact and those 5 weapons, Zane is golden?

#20

I still say that it’s pretty obvious due to the grenade buffs to make two action skills or grenade use a choice plus the fact that the barrier gets certain attributes that are only available when it’s stationary and on the ground are indications that Zane should be able to 1) Be grenadier class and 2) Be a stationary sniper behind the barrier class.

Instead, everything relies on the damage boost from movement speed which results in only one way to play the character, one build, one mod, a handful of weapons etc… Zane was meant to be a swiss army knife giving players the most flexibility but through their decisions made him the most restrictive and “fixing” him with the Seein Dead only limited the options further.