Obviously I’m just guessing, but it might more like “shield cooldown rate”, i.e. +100% halves the delay.
But you could be right, it’s not like we haven’t had some bonkers shield skills in the past, and this would be tied to taking 14 hits, so…
Uhm, didn’t think about that. But if that’s the case, they should really reword it properly. If a text says “-50% delay of something” I expect that delay to be half of what it was. Did shield delay related skills in BL2 work that way?
Oh, now that I think about it, one “bad” aspect of this skill is it’s presence in the melee tree. If Roid shields are still a thing, it’s pretty bad. I remember Zero having a shield regen kill skill in his melee tree in BL2 that you had to avoid for this reason.
There are some other weird things in the Brawl tree btw. “Vigor”, which is in the same tier as “Mindfulness”, seems… incredibly bad? I mean, it’s a kill skill with an extra requirement - not just killing enemies, but you have to kill them with the Action Skill. All of that for 6% movement speed for 8 seconds? Sure it’s per enemy, but… meh.
Also “One with Nature” (tier 1) vs “Root to Rise” (tier 2). They do the exact same thing, +5% max hp per points… except the tier 1 skill ALSO slaps 12% elemental damage reduction on top of it? I mean, it would maybe make sense if they were swapped, but still, it’s weird seeing two skills so similar and so close.
You have hit on a few of the reasons its completely reasonable to think the talent trees were definitely far from final in the preview build given to a limited audience several months before release. There are quite a few that the numbers are just bonkers on. Jab Cross giving 10% gun damage per point, max 50%, for 20 seconds after a melee attack? No way that is final. Its one of the most powerful talents ever in any of the Borderlands games. Plan your build not based on the numbers but based on the effects of the talent and assume any numbers that get crazy will probably be adjusted by launch.
Yeah I agree. If you look at certain skills from a BL2 perspective thy’re just absurd. “Indiscriminate” and “Sustainment” seem bonkers too, especially when you compare them to Maya’s equivalent Chain Reaction and Life Tap.
Also the possible interactions between “Ties that Bind”, “Indiscriminate” and “Catharsis” and the DoT spreading / boosting talents are just mind boggling.
“Tempest” looks completely ridiculous too if you look at it from a BL2 perspective. +40% Shock damage AND +20% for all the other elements? On a tier-2 talent? Compare that to Gaige’s Wires Don’t Talk (+15% just Shock on a tier-4 talent).
Either the game is balanced in a completely different way than BL2, or this skilltrees are really REALLY far from final.
In the other BL games stats like shield recharge delay were calculated like this:
Regular Value/(1 + x) where x is the decimal of the increase/decrease
In the case of Maliwan and Amara’s “From Rest” this could mean the following:
Regular Value: 100%/(1+0,78) = 56,179% (~56,18%)
In other words, if the formula stays the same, then that 78% manifests itself in 43,82% less charge time.
Oh wow. I did a quick test in BL2 and you’re right. A -40% shield recharge delay translated to the base/1,4. It really makes no sense and they should reword those skills.
That formula makes sense for those skills that say they improve Action Skills cooldown RATE by +X%. But saying “Shield Recharge Delay -40%” should translate to base-(base*0.4).
1 Like
They do make sense, but just on a concept and development level. The bad feeling you might get from comparing results comes from the expectation the game sets you up to have. If the game showed the actual result instead of just saying +40% or so, then there wouldn’t be a problem.
Borderlands The Pre-Sequel did it better as it at least showed the actual values for damage reduction. Borderlands 3 could do that for everything if you ask me.
The calculation makes sense when you factor in very high bonuses like those from a COM. It also makes a difference when it comes to the feel certain gear has to have. If a Dormant Turtle Shield had actual 88% less Shield Recharge Delay, then most people wouldn’t feel a difference between that shield with its 5 seconds regular recharge delay and shields with 3 seconds normal delay as that would be a comparison between 0,6 seconds SRD and 0,36 seconds SRD.
So, yeah, as dumb as it might seem, the deminishing returns of these formulas actually work in favor of the games’ balance.
Edit: In regards to Shield Skills, recharge delay could easily be rebalanced for a new formula
Value x (1 - decimal of bonus) by just lowering the bonus. If a skill reduces SRD by just 20% at 5 points, then even 5 additional points would just make it a really good bonus.
1 Like
I totally understand what you’re saying from a balance and feel perspective, but I still can’t help but feel that those skills are really misleading as they’re written.
The formula you suggest + lowering the bonuses to achieve almost the same results seems like the best solution to me.
With that said, that Amara skill “Mindfulness” may not be as strong as I thought but I still think is pretty solid.
Mindfulness can be helpful, great or even terrible, depending on how hard the enemies hit. I can see it getting “not worth it” in the higher difficulties as avoiding damage might be better than getting hit to gather stacks. And as the capstone of the Brawl tree is a dash move, it will incentivice quick movement anyways. But thats a topic to discuss once the game is out and we know how the balancing is. It could easily be possible that there will be many enemies that do many little amounts of damage or DoT’s instead of healthgating you with one attack. In that case Mindfulness will be absolutely great.
1 Like
I also find it weird that Amara has all that health and damage resistance spread across 20 skillpoints, but it’s probably intentional, and you do get some other effects thrown in.
And I agree, I don’t care how shield recharge delay is calculated as long as the wording isn’t incorrect. Damage reduction has the same issue (and so did a few other skills over the years, like Athena’s Conduit).
I hope GB will be better about these at least at some point, even if that point is after launch.
Yeah I was wondering the same. I do think is intentional, so that you can’t just do a “red+blue” tree build and just stack up damage talents without being a glass cannon.
Speaking of red+blue, another idea I had was going down the Mystical Assault tree for “Avatar” (1 extra use of Action Skill during cooldown) while still using “Ties that Bind” + “Allure” from the Fist of the Element tree. Ties that Bind cooldown is just 17 second and since it doesn’t mention duration, I’m assuming it’s still 7 seconds as the base Phasegrasp. With Avatar, you could spam it so often that you’d basically always be shooting at “locked” enemies, maximizing that 35% link damage and “Indiscriminate” bonus uptime. “Ascendant” doubling the singularity range of “Allure” is also great.
I was also wondering if the Link Damage from Ties that Bind is considered Action Skill Damage. I doubt it because it would be insane with some other talents like Do Harm, Laid Bare or Samsara.
I found it rather obvious. She has a control-tree focussed around Facegrasp, so there’s no need to be tanky if your enemies can’t hit you. The middle tree is burst damage and a focus around Phasecast which is just a strong projectile, so you can keep you distance. Her Brawl tree wants you in her enemies’ face all the time, so there needs to be enough HP bonuses to warrant that risky playstyle. As a trade-off the Brawl tree has fewer damage bonuses than the other 2 trees.
At higher levels it will probably be that way that non-brawl-players will try to get at least a few points into "One with Nature’ (which is really strong for a tier 1 skill) and “Clarity” to get access to all possible Action Skill Elements and a damage reduction to 1 of 3 possible elements at a time as well as some health regen. If there is a legendary COM boosting many tier 1 skills, then this might be a great idea.
I think that Gearbox wants to encourage more wide-spread builds with - for example - just 1 Skill Tree filled up to the Capstone and 2 that go halfway down.
Back to the main topic, Amara Builds
Here is my idea of a Melee-Hybrid that uses Fracture/Phaseslam + Soulsap + whatever element is the best at the moment. My focus was to make Amara the tankiest she can be while still having a lot of melee and weapon firepower. I did not take the skill Helping Hand(s) as I don’t know if thats true damage reduction or not. If it is, then it might be worth taking. In the first 35 levels I try to get a good balance of HP(-regen), DPS and utility, which leads to me having no access to Soulsap until Lv 40. Until then, Revelation should do the trick by simply pushing out more DPS (protecting Amara by killing her enemies). From Level 35 on I will go all-in into the Mystical Assault tree to get access to all the good stuff like Soulsap and Avatar. The build is pretty straightforward and has no real weaknesses except long-range-combat, which the build just isn’t made for.
Lv 35
https://bl3skills.com/siren/#5350300103050100000000000000050100000000
Lv 50
https://bl3skills.com/siren/#5350300103050150540010000000050100000000
Lv 70
https://bl3skills.com/siren/#5350503103051150550013303310050100000000
I was messing around trying to come up with a Phaseslam/melee build and ended up doing something very similar - full Brawl tree (obviously) with a little bit of both the others at Lv 50. I’d move some points here and there but the core is definitely Blitz + Illuminated Fist and Do Harm.
I’ve seen footage of Fracture and I didn’t like the look/feel of it. I’d personally stick with base Phaseslam (which looks cool af to me) unless it’s significantly worse damage-wise. Or Downfall if the cooldown doesn’t feel too long. I was also hoping Soul Sap won’t be needed with all those +max HP and regen talents and Guardian Angel.
Soulsap probably isn’t even needed, but my idea was to use the straight line fracture uses to hit multiple enemies (multiple times with Avatar) to instantly refill my HP. Also, depending on the reach of her dash attack it might be worthwhile to dash to the last enemy in-line to hit more with Fracture after making a quick 180. How that all turns out though depends on the skills, the AI and the level design. It is just as possible that a double Phaseslam does the job better.
Downfall sounds really cool, but there are many things that could make the skill bad (being unable to end the laser = being wide open for attacks and the cooldown feels a bit long), so my gut feeling was to go with Fracture/Phaseslam.
But hell, who knows, Amara has a lot of cool sounding stuff, so I might end up switching around constantly xD
I think we might be sleeping on this. Switching action skills and augments can be done at any time. I’m curious actually how abusable this will be in singleplayer. I assume perhaps action skills cannot be switched while they’re on CD, but augment switching (even it’s not allowed while an action skill is active) might have some interesting applications, especially with Avatar
3 Likes
With a proper quick menu, it might be feasible in co-op too
It really will be interesting to see what “routes” people might take. Need quick burst-damage to lower the enemy numbers? Use Phaseslam. Need to get your enemies together or else they surround you? Make a quick switch to Allure or let them turn against each other with Glamour.
With enough practice and proper button mapping, it should take about 1-2 seconds to switch Augments. Sure, in a very frantic fight that is too slow, but Teamwork might make that manageable. It will definitely come in handy when soloing raids.
needs at least 1 point into Laid bare skill literaly the definition of the new slag https://bl3skills.com/siren#0050000000000033300510100000055050203411
i can already tell this is going to be the meta, health regen with the ability to spread all elements at the same time with 1 gun. elemental damage percentage is a multiplyer if i remember correct, so gun damage an stuff is just additive=less effictive. with raid bosses an stuff you cant focus on you action skill to carry you, so you will always need range and options.
Kinda a bold claim to name your build a meta, unless I’m just misunderstanding what you meant. Also, how would you be able to spread all elements with one gun?
Meh, follow your dreams.
1 Like