#1568

I just watched that video Saturday and was considering this method’s utility. I’m on XBOX so clicking in the thumbstick can sometimes fail where the bumper wouldn’t during a long, palm sweat-producing session and it is always deflating to break a MMF chain because of something so seemingly innocuous. I’m gonna try that now.

I’m having the same experience as you. Just recently started playing Melee Zer0 and I’m level 40 in TVHM. I’m just chucking Storm Fronts and jumping into the frey.:crazy_face:

I see you Veteran Ninjas often spec 5/5 into LtW but only 2/5 or so into Resurgence. Is this because you have Resurgence buffed by a COM? I have heard arguments that LtW isn’t that great. I’m rocking this build with a Legendary Hunter and its working so far. Not sure if I just dont know what I’m missing and it will later change, but I know I’ll want more survivability here in 10 levels when I move into UVHM.

On that note, I’m not digging using transfusions at all. I like running Fastballs and having a Tediore reload on deck, sniping multiple mobs with Fastballs while in Deception has proved to be a decent standby strategy for those times I dont quite get the timing down on my shield recharge. Not a problem when Thumping.

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#1569

Thanks for the veteran.
I chose LtW because there isn’t really anything better, as far as I’m concerned. Resurgence isn’t so important since you’ll always use a Moxxi weapon.

Indeed it’s a really minor buff to damage, but still better than nothing, and to get it you just have to move; for reference, jumping on the spot counts as moving.

Your build is perfectly fine, and the Hunter com grants a lot of cooldown reduction which is always welcome.
The fastball strategy is a practical and effective one, especially if your roid shield isn’t that good.

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#1570

I’m so very noobish in this area of the Borderlands, but if I may? I’m using a level 72 Lightning nade to strip my level 74 shields, and it’s working pretty well. Plus it’s a much quicker get than a Chain Lightning. I will be periodically trying for a CL, but as a stop gap I’m finding the Lightning pretty good for the stripping of shieldage. Maybe not the best for Moxxi heals, but I’m glad to have a use for it.

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#1571

Storm Fronts used to be the standard before the Tina DLC. I find them safer to use than a Lightning Bolt because of the AoE, but Lightning Bolts are easy to come by. They’re probably the easiest thing to reliably get for UVHM levelling.

Fastballs and Tediore are badass. Do eet!

I like LtW because seeing that icon up means I’m playing right - if that makes sense ; but its damage boost is truly irrelevant when stacked up against Hide, Rapier and the other skills.

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#1572

Do I smell a loose Maliwan/Tediore allegiance with Bandit seasoning and a possible new name? :thinking:

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#1573

remember when i say that, the problem now is how to kill him fast, lol.

I tried it with Maya at op10 and had difficullty killing it with Sandhawk swap to Amigo. lol

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#1574

While it’s hard to argue with the better melee Zer0’s out there, from a theorycrafting perspective I think Like the Wind isn’t offering much and that Velocity offers more in terms of speeding up the grog projectile for slagging along with your launcher for second winds. It also depends on whether you want Unf0rseen or not, a lot of the better melee Zer0’s don’t take it because it can mess up MMF chains.

For those of us without the UCP, I think it’s pretty hard to argue with this as a “minimum” melee Zer0 build

That leaves 17 points, 5 of which at least must go into Cunning to get Death Bl0ss0m (Kunai). Of all options, Counter Strike probably gives the most damage despite my bias towards Unf0rseen so that would leave us with this

Now there are 12 points remaining. Topping off Counter Strike seems like the most damage in practice, so now down to 11

From here, now I think we are in the toss-up zone. So the most popular option seems to involve either maxing out like the Wind and Resurgence or rearranging the points between them as you get a boost from Resurgence from the COM and it’s unnecessary most of the time anyway with the Grog/Rubi.

So let’s go through the options going back to the 11 point leftover idea. Grim is out since we’re playing melee Zer0, as is Be Like Water as we’re not getting gun kills often or have any need for the tiny increase in gun damage on a melee kill. 0ptics doesn’t seem to make much sense either. You could make a tiny argument for 0ne Sh0t 0ne Kill (OSOK), as it would apply to your launcher in FFYL, but that’s pretty situational and it’s not a huge boost, so I think we can leave that out too. Tightening the spread on any of your weapons doesn’t seem to be useful, so that removes Precisi0n.

That now leaves us with Unf0rseen, Fearless, Like the Wind, Vel0city, and Two Fang as our options. Two Fang doesn’t seem to yield much benefits except in a FFYL launcher or heavy weapon scenario, though maybe additional slag chance if you fire off two grog projectiles as you are closing.

So now we’re down to Fearless, Like the Wind, Vel0city, and Unf0rseen. A lot of this then comes down to your opinion on Unf0rseen, if you see it as a problem with MMF, then it has to go too. However, if you see it as an additional damage source and one that can pick up stray kills for you, then I think it’s the best choice out of the bunch. Fearless makes a lot of sense if you are using the Love Thumper and again, you have a good fire rate boost in FFYL. That would then leave a choice between Like the Wind, Resurgence, and Vel0city. We’re back at Resurgence because we can move points between it and LtW easily. Resurgence actually makes the most sense I think because it applies on Rapier kills and is boosted by the COM, but in practice the better melee Zer0 players don’t seem to need it so…I dunno there…

Once again, bringing us back to LtW vs. Vel0city. The plus for LtW is that it’s always on, but the minus is that it’s not adding anything really despite always being on. I think Vel0city actually makes more sense from a theory crafting perspective because of the boost to the grog projectile speed for slagging, but it’s hard to argue with the excellent melee Zer0 players on this forum who don’t use it and just have LtW on all the time.

6 Likes
#1575

I agree Velocity should always get a point or two or three. Unless Pimp of course, but that would be the only reason to not.

OSOK seems pointless. I’ll take it for Pimp runs - might as well if I’ve got a few extra points that can’t go into Velocity.

Fearless is a fine place to dump points. It’s mostly for LT, but it can help with FFYL.

Two Fang : I’ve started maxing it for my OP0 guy because I decided to ditch the Grog and go Rubi. The extra shots improves slag chance. Otherwise I dislike it.

Unforseen : again, 3 points MAX for sub-OP. Preferably 2. Around 4 points for OP4+ in my experience.

Resurgence : worth a point with the L Ninja, but more? Eh.

Bloodshed needs KB, Followthrough, Backstab, Execute and MMF. The 14 other points you need to facilitate getting to MMF can literally go anywhere (except Grim) and will make no appreciable impact on your game. So Iron Hand, BLW, Resurgence, LtW - whatever.

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#1576

I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want full points in Unf0rseen if you are using it in the first place. It’s not a ton of damage so you would in theory want as much as possible…As this is non UCP, you need to take Ir0n Hand or Be Like Water to open up the third layer, hence it’s inclusion, for UCP you could drop it for LtW of course as you can take Fearless in the second level. Be Like Water would be active so rarely that Ir0n Hand seems the better choice by far.

Resurgence is useful for Rapier kills, so that seems more useful than other options given that you are often killing things with the Rapier.

The main argument against Vel0city would be if you use a slag pimp to spread slag as you close the gap, but I don’t know how many melee Zer0 players do this…if you needed a sniper for whatever reason you could just use the Lyuda otherwise or if you needed an anti-buzzard device there’s other options than the pimp too.

I agree these don’t make much difference in gameplay, the damage is of course coming from your multiplicative boosts elsewhere in the tree that we are taking as a given.

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#1577

Because I’m a nerd.
I love the skill for gun Zer0, and for melee I like to play around with pushing it just enough to soften guys up, but not wreck my chain. It can (in theory) make for faster Executes if the target is already weakened. This potentially gets me longer chains. True? Who cares?! :joy:

I can’t think of a single person on this forum who does, so I don’t think we really need to consider it.

Yep. I would say absolutely 100% but I’m starting to wonder if it would be better to have less health and take BLW just to advance the tree. Still, it’s only 15%, so it wouldn’t matter much.

And with Resurgence, yes it’s better to have it than not. The problem is I’m a chicken and I don’t want to have to rely on getting healing with a Rapier. I don’t use the LT much but if I did I would definitely max it out. With Hide, one typically is going to get much of one’s healing when stripping with CL and Grog.

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#1578

Great points Jefe!

For personal preference though, I hate unforeseen. Because it messes up my chain. I’d rather make adjustments on a full hp mob than panic locating another target because the previous target got rekt by my exploding decoy :smiley:

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#1579

I appreciate the theory crafting breakdown. This is helpful. I never really considered Unf0rseen in Ninja Zer0 builds, but then again I haven’t used it since its patch, so I’ll play with it. Zer0 was actually my first and main VH that I got to level 50, in the vanilla game way back when, and I made good use of it with my old P15t07z3R0. I could see it being nothing more than a liability a week or so ago, but as i get better at Melee I think I could make it work. Being an avid Thumper I’m super cognizant of the location of barrels now, so no worries there. Thanks for the words, I appreciate all the help I’ve had with this. Haven’t had this much feedback since I played Deputy Sal.

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#1580

About Vel0city, as Jefe said

I don’t just use Pimpernel for slagging, I also use it as a FFYL weapon: as a Ninja I won’t ever put a point in Velocity; slagging with Grog is only for those situations when I’m in the enemy’s face or it’s too dangerous to switch to another weapon.
(About this, man, OP10 doesn’t forgive a single mistake! :cry: )

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#1581

Seriously, I’ve had too many chains end because I didn’t slag something since I didn’t have time to slag the entire room because of damage incoming.

Considering grabbing my slag pimp from the vault but then I’m missing out on a launcher or a general gun for damage out of deception. With you could pick up

Feels like I’ve had to use the Harold for quick health a lot more too since just getting nicked by a stray bullet feels like it hits a lot harder than old op8.

Was excited that it was possible to grab at one with the gun in melee builds but can’t justify giving up the other points in cunning/bloodshed to get down sniper tree

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#1582

You guys are not making me want to get my guy to OP10. I got him to OP9 and haven’t bothered to do the second run. Kind of a dilemma : I’m not going to not get him there - if only for co-op purposes - but I’m definitely not keen on playing him there.

I’m really really trying to only have 2 of each character (one @ OP0 , one at OP10) but this might be too large a spread - that is : one’s too easy, the other too difficult.

Ugh.

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#1583

nope, not always on, if you are standing still when you execute, you will not get LTW bonus. that is why you see some players jump/move backwards before hitting execute to get the LTW bonus. (plus it is so cool, and you can time your execute at lowest millisecond possible.)

I would like @peddroelm to look into the math on Melee Zero next like the damage on executes on each second, etc. etc.

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#1584

@nat_zero_six this formula seems quite comprehensive . You want me to verify it ?

Or just to look at deception bonuses (how they change with time left) … is it worth waiting to the last millisecond ?

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#1585

Deception bonuses:

type A crit          50% 100% 150% 200% 250%
melee multiplier  130% 260% 390% 520% 650%
weapon damage      40%  80% 120% 160% 200%

I think I know what you asked … using the build and gear - CALCULATE the damage of this skill combination (backstab/execute) vs lvl 90 enemy on the last or second to last deception second ? I don’t have the stats of the said OP 10 lvl gear nor OP10 enemies (my zero is lvl 70)…

Might be quicker (and more accurate ) to ‘measure’ this by somebody that has access to the said gear and OP10 lvl enemies … I’ll try making the how to use/interpret the numbers video this weekend …

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#1586

I was watching one of MoLMF’s videos and he said you get Max damage after 0.8 seconds are left. Haven’t tested this bit the damage seems consistent after that point up until the last possible millisecond.

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#1587

I’ve seen 0.7 seconds. Semantics - it seems you’ve got a fair bit of time.

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